


Literally Speaking

by halotolerant



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Ableism, Ableist Language, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Aftercare, Alternate Universe, Anal Fingering, BDSM Thoughts, Bottom Hannibal, Bottom Will, Butt Plugs, Caretaking, Coffee, Dating, Developing Relationship, Dogs, Domestic Fluff, Dry Sex, First Meetings, Fluff and Angst, Hannibal is Not a Cannibal, Hospitals, Jealousy, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Massage, Nipple Play, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Orgasm Denial, Porn Watching, Pornstars, Prostate Massage, References to Illness, Riding, Rimming, Seizures, Service Top, Sex Work, Shower Sex, Virginity Kink
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-06-02
Packaged: 2018-05-18 13:02:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 31,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5929393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halotolerant/pseuds/halotolerant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“So you’ve never been with a man before?” Keith is prompting ‘Will’. </p><p>“Uh, no.” There’s a sound like Will is sucking his lips in, like he’s really uncertain. Good actor, he must be, and wasted on this in a sense - but then this does pay. 'Virgin Hole Boy Chronicles' is in its fourth year of production and subscriptions are up annually. </p><p>And Hannibal? Hannibal’s vids account for over half the streaming revenue alone. </p><p>Will must know that he’s here on Hannibal’s approval, that he’s nothing compared to the star. Reason to be nervous indeed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So someone prompted me with: _'could you write some old-fashioned 'Will getting his prostate stimulated for the first time and going completely out of his mind' porn? Please?_ And I took that and ran with it and wrote 'Will getting his prostate stimulated IN porn AS as a porn actor'... 
> 
> So, this is smutty, fluffy and ridiculous, but then why not? *g*
> 
> (Thank you **elfwhistletree** for a beta on this slightly expanded version from the original post)

They met before the shoot started, of course, with a handshake (this ‘Will’, if that’s his real name, blushing, awkward, not sure where to look) and a chance to look over each other’s health screen and an in-life height comparison for Joe in lighting. Then came hair and make-up (Hannibal’s famous long braid brushed through and re-tied), and finally wardrobe.

 

But this is porn, nothing is real, and right now, in the bedroom set, Will is getting interviewed on camera like he’s only just arrived, sitting nervously on the edge of the double bed, hands intermittently twitching or wringing together. 

 

Hannibal smokes one last cigarette by the studio door, half an ear on the interview, and grins. 

 

“So you’ve never been with a man before?” Keith is prompting ‘Will’. 

 

“Uh, no.” There’s a sound like Will is sucking his lips in, like he’s really uncertain. Good actor, he must be, and wasted on this in a sense - but then this does pay. _'Virgin Hole Boy Chronicles'_ is in its fourth year of production and subscriptions are up annually. 

 

And Hannibal? Hannibal’s vids account for over half the streaming revenue alone. 

 

Will must know that he’s here on Hannibal’s approval, that he’s nothing compared to the star. Reason to be nervous indeed. 

 

“No, I’ve never even kissed a man,” Will is saying now, as Hannibal, cigarette flicked away, makes his way towards the soundstage, swinging the weight of his plait from side to side on his neck as he works out the cracks in his spine, flexing his back and arms, rubbing a hand at his crotch to get ready. 

 

Not that it will take much effort. This boy - man, he’s not young, he just gives off a young vibe despite the stubble and the smile lines - this man is effortlessly attractive. 

 

This could be another million-hit-plus shoot, easily. 

 

The ‘interview’ winds up. 

 

“Well, you’ll be interested to hear,” Keith says, pretending to consult a clipboard, “that the guy on shift today to look after you is Hannibal Lecter. You might have heard of him.”

 

Will makes a decent pass at ‘surprised’ and ‘overwhelmed’ and ‘I didn’t find this out when I signed a contract two weeks ago’. 

 

The camera cuts, and Keith and the ‘interview’ chair clear off the set. Will sits back on the bed and Hannibal sets himself up to come through the door in the set wall.

 

“Action!” Keith yells.

 

“Good afternoon, Will,” Hannibal says by way of greeting. 

 

Will shuffles even further away on the bed, but arches his back and neck slightly, reaching up even as he’s pulling back. 

 

Hannibal comes to stand between his legs, and leans in to kiss him. There isn’t any more dialogue scripted, this isn’t _The West Wing._

 

But, “What are you going to do to me?” Will asks, breathless, when their lips part. He’d tasted of sherbet lemons and he smells of a ghastly aftershave that Hannibal is making a note to complain to Rita about - these guys need to be told to shower, if necessary, she knows his likes and dislikes. 

 

Hannibal reaches round him, trails his fingers up over Will’s spine, separated from skin by the cheap polo shirt still – wardrobe had gone ‘preppy’ with Will, clearly, and it sort of works, although he got here in rough plaids and worn denim that really suited him better.

 

“I’m going to open your mind,” Hannibal murmurs. He doesn’t do filthy talk, or at least he doesn’t spout it. Focus-group research suggests the less he says any actual dirty words, the more erotic the audience finds what he does say. 

 

“I - I want… good,” Will’s eyes flutter closed. He’s getting hard in his jeans. Hannibal steps back and strips his own t-shirt over his head, picks up Will’s hands and guides them to his chest, to the thick brush of hair over his pecs. 

 

“You like that?” Will asks, and it sounds like he’s actually asking, like he’s terribly uncertain, still. 

 

“Rub,” Hannibal tells him, and has to breath sharply through his nose when Will does as he’s told, makes his palms flat and goes for it, hot friction over Hannibal’s nipples that zings down to his groin, making him leak. 

 

Hannibal gets his belt off, opens his fly, and pulls Will’s head in to mouth at his groin, shoving the scent and the dampness in his face. 

 

Will moans, half gets up from the bed. He noses at the head of Hannibal’s cock and makes a choked noise. 

 

“You can taste if you like,” Hannibal finds himself saying, more gently than he’d planned. 

 

Immediately Will’s lips have parted and he’s sealed them over the wet patch on the cotton of Hannibal's briefs, tongue moving in to make everything wetter. His hands are still braced on Hannibal’s chest. 

 

The camera guy comes round, gets a few angles. Hannibal lets it go on a while, stares up at the light rigging overhead to distract himself from Will’s mouth and the rising tempo of his hot breath. 

 

Then, “I’m not shy, so you shouldn’t be,” Hannibal says, and pushes Will away, gesturing for him to strip. 

 

Will’s body is slim and slightly soft in places and more or less hairless on the torso. His cock is on the narrow side but long, and right now an angry red, head shining with slick and well clear of the foreskin. 

 

Hannibal tuts appreciatively and steps in - Will has stood up to get naked, and they’re standing facing each other now - and gently grips Will’s cock, pulling his foreskin back up very slowly and then down again, which makes Will’s thighs tremble.  

 

Hannibal grins and trails his fingers over the ridges of Will’s hip bones, one side and then the other, and urges him backwards till he’s sitting on the bed again, then shuffling back, letting Hannibal follow after him on all fours like he’s stalking prey. 

 

Hannibal doesn’t let his kink side intrude in his work life. That’s private and not something he’ll share on camera. But he has a suspicion Will would be a wonderful submissive, given the chance. A shame they met like this, professionally, and not in a way that could go anywhere. 

 

He could picture Will bound now, bound and squirming, desperate because he really was, not just for the camera or for a pay day. Desperate and needing, and trusting Hannibal to meet that need.

 

Hannibal’s cock twitches, and Will’s eyes widen and then his legs move further apart, like he genuinely wants it. 

 

Really not a bad actor at all. 

 

Will’s hole is small and dark - he’s not bleached it or made any other concession in his grooming to a life in porn, which of course helps his credibility for this role. The muscle flexes and tightens a bit as Hannibal gets closer. 

 

Hannibal shoots a look in the mirror high over the bed - out of shot of the camera - in which he can see the director. Keith nods and gives a thumbs-up: stick with it. 

 

“You ready for me to touch you, Will?” Hannibal asks. Will’s got his chin on his chest, staring at his every move, he looks almost convincingly nervous. 

 

“I - I think so?”

 

“I’ll open you slowly. One finger at a time. Make it slick and smooth. You’ll like it, Will, I promise you that.”

 

Will’s eyes stare into his, transfixed. His nostrils flare. 

 

Hannibal reaches out and rests a hand on the centre of Will’s chest, a soothing, grounding gesture that doesn’t belong here. 

 

But he leaves his hand in place, and feels the beating of Will’s heart, tympanic under the skin, as with his other hand he gets the lube from the bedside table. 

 

One finger well coated, Hannibal circles Will’s hole, taking his time. For the first few seconds Will blinks, and then as the blood flow to the skin increases and the sensitivity comes, he closes his eyes and gasps a little. 

 

“Hannibal!” he calls out, under his breath, like a plea. 

 

Hannibal needs to get his head clear. He was going to pause for a moment there just to go for a kiss. 

 

To distract himself, he puts the slightest pressure on Will’s hole - very carefully, because Will might not be that tight and they need to preserve the illusion. 

 

But it’s a taut ring of muscle that meets him, and scarcely any give, and Will’s moaning again, heels sliding on the sheets.

 

“You’ll like it,” Hannibal murmurs again, and gets more lube, gets back into slow stroking, steady, round and round and finishing each second circle with a press inwards, until finally Will’s hole is taking his finger with a puckering kiss and a spasm and Will seems caught between trying to close his legs and fight the sensation and getting them wider to ask for more. 

 

Hannibal pushes inside to past his first knuckle, and Will’s hips lift off the bed. 

 

So responsive! The things Hannibal could do to someone like this. 

 

More lube, and Hannibal concentrates on working in a second finger. He notes Will’s cock, thickened and now even redder than before, lying against his stomach and pooling precome over the skin. Will hasn’t made one attempt to touch himself, Hannibal notes, and wonders if that’s because he hasn’t been given permission. 

 

And then bites the inside of his own cheek and reminds himself that This. Is. Not. Real. 

 

He’s never had problems like this in his life, keeping the work professional. What’s the matter with him today?

 

Two fingers into Will, and Hannibal crooks them up and finds the smooth peach of his prostate, and Will almost kicks him in the face. 

 

“Fuck! Sorry!” Will’s half sat-up, bright red in the face now too. He’s put his hands over his mouth. “Sorry!” 

 

“It’s OK,” Hannibal tells him, and catches Keith’s eye the mirror and nods. It’s fine, he wasn’t hurt, it’ll add veracity to leave that in. 

 

This time he does bend up and over Will’s body, leans in to kiss him, to get the mood back, build up to the warmth again. 

 

Will’s mouth is dry and tacky, and he’s struggling to breathe. He tastes of sweat, but the aftershave is long gone. Hannibal moves his tongue in Will’s mouth and brings his fingers back to Will’s hole at the same time. 

 

Breaking the kiss, Will hits his head back against the pillows, eyes wild. 

 

And then, very, very quietly, too quietly for the cameras, he speaks. 

 

“Thank you,” he whispers. “I really never have done this, ever.”

 

Hannibal has to fight not to freeze over him. If that’s the truth Will should be with someone… well… they shouldn’t be on a soundstage with all these people, that’s not ideal, surely? Why would anyone actually get deflowered on a porn shoot? It’s never, ever a good idea to get involved in other performers’ lives but now Hannibal is wondering who the hell this Will Graham really is, outside this studio hangar. 

 

Half in a daze, he remembers to pull back to leave Will’s body in clear view of the camera again, but he doesn’t like doing it. 

 

More lube. Three fingers. He makes little circles on Will’s prostate, wanting to spin this out, wanting to make it so good that Will never looks back in regret about this choice, about this day, about what he gave – is giving - to Hannibal. 

 

After not much more of this treatment, Will arches up off the bed, red flush blooming over his chest like it would on a woman, and comes without a touch to his dick, shooting for what seems like ages, his hands flung up and clutching at nothing as he rides it out, overwhelmed. 

 

Hannibal wants to curl around him and stroke his forehead, wants to take him somewhere private and dark and keep him safe. 

 

Instead, he sticks on a condom and fucks Will's overstimulated hole for three minutes - as little time as he thinks he can get away with - for the benefit of the cameras. Will takes it dreamily, and whines when it stops with Hannibal’s faked orgasm. 

 

“Cut!” Keith yells. “OK. Great stuff! That’ll do for this afternoon, principles can go, Rita, Dave, at my trailer in two!”

 

Someone comes with bathrobes for them both. Hannibal calls for water, passes Will a bottle. He’s not quite sure what to say. No one mentions that he’s still hard.

 

Joe comes over. He’s holding out a clipboard. Some waiver, Hannibal assumes. 

 

“Man,” Joe says to Will. “I saw you in _‘Virgin of the Grail’_ \- that shit was amazing! Could you sign this DVD insert for me?”

 

Will grins brightly, like two minutes ago he wasn’t dissolving under Hannibal’s hands. “Sure.”

 

When Joe’s gone, Will turns to Hannibal, looking slightly sheepish. 

 

“I didn’t think that it was likely to be your first time, in truth,” Hannibal says frostily. He’s feeling very tired all of a sudden. 

 

“I’ve done porn,” Will says, slowly. “Het porn. Niche stuff, I… I tend to take it, it’s true - been pegged a lot, but I’ve never…” He clears his throat, blushes, and looks up at Hannibal with a look in his eyes that, damn everything, Hannibal wants to believe in. “I’ve never had it from a man. And never… I would have done anything you asked me to, the way you spoke to me? I would have taken your whole hand if you’d told me I wanted it.”

 

Hannibal still hasn’t come, and maybe that’s why his brain refuses to analyse that statement in any logical manner. 

 

If he had any sense, he’d get up and walk away. 

 

“What are you doing for dinner, later?” Will asks softly.

 

If was porn, Hannibal would make an innuendo. 

 

But this might, just might, be something real life. 

 

“Nothing,” he says. “You?”

 

Will smiles at him. 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So apparently I have more of this semi-random verse in my head? 
> 
> Also filling the prompt: _Hannibal enthusiastically rimming the crap out of Will. (that sounds so wrong). I do realize I could find this in like every fic ever but I'm very lazy._
> 
> Huge thanks to everyone who encouraged me after the first instalment <3

It’s not that porn always make sense, or has much of what you’d call actual plot.

 

But real life? That can be so much worse. 

 

The first time Hannibal met Will Graham (they’re on second name terms now, which for co-stars in the adult film industry is progress), Hannibal (more or less) took his anal virginity.

 

The second time they meet, it’s at a _Yo! Sushi_ , everyone has clothes on, and Will talks for nearly an hour in a flappy way with lots of hand gestures about why people shouldn’t interbreed their labradoodles. 

 

Hannibal sits quietly during this, drinks a lot of green tea, and wonders why he isn’t bored yet. He’s usually short on patience for subjects that aren’t his own particular interests, and even those things he doesn’t like discussing with under-informed or stupid people. Which is most people, in his opinion – add that to the fact that he usually thinks of people who aren’t interested in what he likes as stupid by default, and there’s a reason he doesn’t socialize much.

 

The adult film industry has many attractive aspects, and one of them is never having to develop yourself as a person or learn to play any better with others - at least beyond the obvious. Hannibal can devote hours to edging a guy to the point of making him scream, but he doesn’t have to do more than walk away abruptly if said guy starts trying to talk. 

 

Will, though, has a unique and entirely unexpected quality to him, one that stays just as radiant even with his lovely body covered up.

 

One that is still present even when, a week later, at their third meeting (a decent Italian restaurant a few blocks from Hannibal’s house), Will shows up blinking, sneezing, red-nosed and streamy, and apologizes profusely before making as if to leave. 

 

“I don’t want to give it to you,” he says, waving Hannibal away. “But I wanted you to know I was… Fuck, I feel a bit stupid now.”

 

“You wanted to show me you were unwell?” Hannibal raises his eyebrow. 

 

“I wouldn’t want you to think I’d make an excuse not to see you! And now I sound completely delirious, so that’s wonderful.”

 

“How are you feeling?” Hannibal steps closer anyway, and runs a hand over Will’s forehead. He’s hot but also clammy, and close to his breathing sounds harsh. 

 

It’s stupid, but Hannibal was already around the porn scene in the mid-eighties, and some memories don’t ever shift, and seeing Will shivering makes a nasty twinge turn over in his gut. 

 

“I’m fine, this is from my neighbor’s kid - I babysit.” Will shrugs, smiling. “I’ve got Tylenol and Sudafed at home, and, like, a liter of orangeade.”

 

“I’ll make you curried chicken broth,” Hannibal announces, without thinking. “I mean… My house is quite…” 

 

 _He picked a restaurant near his house, because it’s their third date_ , he doesn’t say, and watches Will hear the words anyway. 

 

Because obviously high school level dating etiquette applies to their situation, and in no way is the problem that Hannibal has basically no frame of reference for adult relationships, at least ‘adult’ in that other sense.

 

Nine days ago, Hannibal was playing with this boy’s prostate like he had no other hobbies, if he could only remember that and stop feeling so stupidly nervous. 

 

Will frowns for a moment - he’s not a boy, not a boy at all, and Hannibal wants to know the names of everyone who ever made Will have to learn to be wary of an invitation. 

 

“Yeah, I guess?” Will makes his decision, smiles slightly, steps forward, and Hannibal feels like he wants to grin. “I don’t want to put you to any trouble.” He sneezes again. (This should not be delightful.)

 

“No trouble. I have to eat, anyway.” 

 

If his life were a film, Hannibal would fire the scriptwriter.

 

But, “Well, thanks then,” Will says, smiling, and falls into step, letting Hannibal lead the way. 

 

Trusting Hannibal. Just like when he trusted Hannibal to finger-fuck him to a melting, squirming oblivion, and Hannibal is not thinking about that now, not going there in his head, is thinking about that old gum stuck to the pavement, that vomit by the lamp-post, the need to pay his gas bill - anything else. 

 

At his house, he makes the broth whilst Will browses through Hannibal's iPod, and puts on a selection of Verdi with apparent interest though avowed ignorance. Hannibal looks up sometimes, and sees Will listening, rapt, head tilted, pausing now and then to cough. 

 

The curried chicken broth, Hannibal serves with a hot lemon toddy, various cold cures and the offer of a blanket even at table. Will flushes up, as he finally gets warm, and smiles gratefully, and eventually dozes off on the sofa listening to more opera whilst Hannibal washes up the dishes. 

 

Hannibal might want to lay Will out on a bed, hand-wash him with a flannel and a hot towel and massage cream into his body and kiss the arches of his feet, but that doesn’t entirely fit with not being creepily off-putting, and so he should tell Will to leave. 

 

“I do have a spare room, if you don’t want to move too far tonight,” Hannibal hears himself saying softly, nudging Will’s shoulder. 

 

Not for the first time in dealing with Will, he waits for the other shoe to drop.

 

“That’s kind of you,” Will says, sleepily, blinking. 

 

“It’s not kind at all,” Hannibal has to point out - one of them has to argue this: “If I want you near me, then the offer is to my benefit.”

 

“Win-win, then,” Will tells him, and gets up, re-wrapping his blanket around himself. “But you are probably going to catch this cold now, you realize?”

 

-

 

Hannibal does get the cold, three days later. It is foul and horrifying and undignified, and he has to cancel a planned day on set because you cannot top and sneeze, or at least you can’t expect people to want to buy it to watch and get off to.  

 

At least, that probably is a kink, because everything is to someone, in Hannibal’s experience, but it’s still not a viable market base.

 

“I hate to say ‘I told you so’, but…” Will says, turning up at Hannibal’s door that evening with a lemon cheesecake in a box from a store, a carton of _Ben & Jerry’s_ and a bottle of surprisingly good whiskey. This is the fourth time they’ve met, Hannibal is an unattractive rumpled pile of snot and Will wants to order Chinese food and can’t understand why Hannibal doesn’t own any takeaway menus, seems more bemused by that than Hannibal’s taxidermy collection, which is unceremoniously revealed when Will mistakes the dining room door for the downstairs bathroom.

 

 _Cool, I am always up for squirrels playing poker,_ Will had said.  

 

Hannibal is starting to wonder if he is dreaming all this. 

 

Will finishes the shrimp lo mein, and they watch a live Royal Ballet performance of _The Firebird_ on cable, and then Will makes Hannibal a hot drink, sits back on the sofa, scratches under his shirt at his sweetly rounded full belly, and says:

 

“I had sex with a ballerina today.”

 

Hannibal wishes his ears didn’t feel full of glue. 

 

“Yeah, an actual ballerina - well, she told me between takes that she took classes for a while.” Will sighs. He sounds really casual but he’s staring forward at the now-blank TV, and chewing at his lip. “It’s like I say, I tend to take it a lot in my movies, and she had the whole deal, like, it was a thing? That she had this tutu on and all elegant and then she lifted it up and bam! Strap-on dildo.”

 

For a moment, Hannibal closes his eyes. This is important, and he wants to get it right, and he’s a pile of raw skin and virus. 

 

“Was it pleasant for you?”

 

“I came.” Will shrugs. “But not… Like…. Man, you made me come like you had liquefied my spine. And… we should talk about that? I mean… Are we…? I want to date you, but if you want to be friends, if this is being friends, I could… I like hanging out too.”

 

“I don’t have any friends,” Hannibal says, truthfully. 

 

Will meets his eye, and blinks, and blushes some more. Hannibal has been feeling like a limp rag all day, but right now he wants to gather Will up and hug him, feels strong enough to do anything if Will needed it to be consoled. 

 

He opens his arms, praying he hasn’t misjudged this through his feverish brain, and Will folds into him, sighing. 

 

It’s only about ten seconds before Hannibal has to push him away to avoid sneezing into his hair, but it’s something. 

 

Hannibal wakes up a bit later, tucked in on the sofa, his shoes removed. When he looks up, he sees Will sitting at the kitchen table, bent over a laptop and illuminated by the glow like some ethereal creature. 

 

“I never sleep well after a day of shooting,” Will confesses, when he sees Hannibal watching him. “So I’m browsing for a rescue dog.”

 

“You’re getting a dog?”

 

“Nah, not allowed with my lease.” Will sighs. “But looking at them makes me feel… more OK about stuff.”

 

Hannibal nods and drifts back to sleep again. 

 

-

 

The fifth time they meet, neither of them is a walking biohazard and Will, at least, isn’t wearing any clothes. 

 

Hannibal hadn’t realized, when he’d been invited to come and advise on a film he’d been up till then only vaguely aware of, which he had a co-producing share in - _Tales of the Dungeon Slave_ \- that the picture was largely Will Graham tied to a pillar, in a collar, getting attention from various women in stilettos and their plastic appendages.

 

He spends the shoot at the back of the room, digging his nails into his palms. Will having sex with other people, for the job, is not the problem - that’s the job and it’s Hannibal’s job too. 

 

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t taking all his self-control not to wander over and try and join in, and do it _right_ , get Will back to that place they found together, where he melts. These people aren’t giving Will what he needs; it’s like watching a bunch of would-be concert pianists go for a Steinway in ski gloves.

 

At the end, after shooting wraps and everyone’s milling about, Hannibal finally lets himself go up to the set and gets introduced to various of the actors. Will’s in a bathrobe, pale and not really that sweaty, because they didn’t touch him properly for that. When his eyes meet Hannibal’s, he lights up. 

 

“Why didn’t you come forward?” he asks, under his breath. “Could have kept my erection so much easier if I’d been able to see you watching me.” 

 

And then he blushes - _there it is_ , Hannibal thinks, watching the red smear over the dip between Will’s pectoral muscles. Will ducks his head, ears turning pink.  

 

Real life can fail to make sense, and porn can fail to make sense, and combining the two rarely helps anything. 

 

-

 

For their sixth meeting, they go to the ballet for real. It’s _Swan Lake_ , which Hannibal assumes - correctly, it turns out, though only thanks to Don Bluth and some ghastly sounding animation with a talking frog - that Will knows the plot for. 

 

Then they go for dinner at _Chateau George_ , with four courses, three deep rows of cutlery either side of the plate and a live piano failing to do justice to Gershwin, which Hannibal is overjoyed to see seems to annoy Will too. 

 

It’s the classic elegant date, the obvious romantic evening from every cheap movie, the script that writes itself. 

 

‘Yeah, so I have to actually go home tonight.” Will says, once they leave the restaurant, where they’d talked about music, dogs, swans (swans vs. dogs, literally and otherwise), travel, piracy sites and whether Audrey Hepburn was better as Eliza Doolittle than Julie Andrews (unresolved). “I’m waiting on a washing machine, you see? And they said they might deliver from six tomorrow morning, so…”

 

He does kiss Hannibal, though, under the streetlamp, picture perfect. The taste of him is sudden and immersive, a memory that makes Hannibal quiver. Will clutches the lapels of Hannibal’s coat, falling into him, and moans, and opens for everything Hannibal wants to do. It’s a cliché but it doesn’t feel like one.

 

“I hate your washing machine,” Hannibal informs him. “I hate it intensely and profoundly. Breathlessly. Abjectly.”

 

Will swallows hard, and almost whimpers at him. 

 

“I’ll be sure and tell it so,” he says, and drags himself away and out of Hannibal’s reach.

 

-

 

It’s less than twenty-four hours since they parted, and Hannibal is cooking for his lunch - pasta puttanesca, for which he feels a particular affection - and then the doorbell rings. 

 

“Will! Hello! What a pleasant surprise.”

 

“Hannibal Lecter,” Will says, standing on the doorstep in a t-shirt and very tight jeans, and carrying a plastic bag. “It’s entirely obvious that we’re both terrible at this, and will you please fuck me before something else happens?”

 

It’s quite surreal. 

 

( _It’s quite a lot like porn,_ Hannibal thinks, and feels the impulse to laugh, before looking at Will and feeling other impulses rising with considerably more insistence.)

 

“I want to tie you up,” Hannibal says - because the doorstep at noon is indeed the ideal place for this conversation. “You should know that. Not right now, you understand, but eventually. I want to tie you down and touch you, send you flying. I want to teach you what that body can do. I want to... I want so much, Will, it scares me a little, and you should…”

 

He’s silenced by the process of being more or less flattened to the wall behind him by an oncoming Will at speed, who kisses him, grinds down into him and then clings on, clearly wanting to be lifted off his feet. 

 

“Yes, all of that, good.” Will breaks away, panting, and gets back in again, mouthing words into the side of Hannibal’s neck. “I want you inside me, you should get there, now, right away, I feel like I’ve never been touched there since you.”

 

Hannibal puts his hands on Will’s ass and digs in his nails, and lifts Will up properly so he can carry him through to the living room. Will squeaks happily and tightens his legs round Hannibal’s waist. 

 

Hannibal has had a lot of sex with a lot of people, but it’s totally different laying Will carefully on his back on the sofa, and helping him get his clothes off. By the time they’re both naked, Hannibal’s hands are shaking. 

 

“Please, please, do something to me!” Will murmurs, because of course he’s already figured out what his pleading makes of Hannibal’s ability to resist. 

 

“You’ve done something to me already.” Hannibal kisses him hard, hungrily, and then positions Will so his ass is canted up over the low sofa arm, and gets between his legs. 

 

Will smells of that same ghastly aftershave, and still isn’t shaven or bleached behind his balls, and Hannibal presses his mouth to that beautiful, dark hole with a grunt of satisfaction. 

 

Under him, Will arches and flexes.

 

Hannibal licks him, licks the sweet, tender muscle he remembers so fondly, until it’s slick and twitching and winking at him and Will is panting and wild, trying to shift with every stroke. 

 

“Please, please, please,” Will is begging, a mindless litany, and Hannibal manages to put together half a logical thought, and looks around the room, and realizes the plastic bag Will brought contains condoms and lube. 

 

“I like you begging for me,” Hannibal says, entirely redundantly, and slicks up his fingers. “And I will always be here, Will, I will always give you what you need.”

 

“Fucker, you fucker,” Will breathes. His face is actually wet. “You fucker you’re going to break me and I don’t even care.”

 

Hannibal pauses, and nuzzles the side of Will’s knee, moves up his body and delivers one gentle kiss to each nipple. He won’t promise anything - words don’t mean a lot, especially when you’re used to speaking from a script - but he will earn this trust the proper way, the best way, with time and with actions. 

 

“Fingers, or straight in?” he asks.

 

Will stares at him for a moment. Then he laughs. “Like tying me up’s going to make any difference to how much of a slave for you I am,” he murmurs. “Straight in, for fuck’s sake, please!"

 

Hannibal obliges.

 

Will is hot and tight – so unbelievably tight, although Hannibal’s starting to suspect that the reasons that this feels better than any sex he’s had in his life are illogical and unlikely and nothing to do with anatomy at all. He thrusts in long and slow and deep, working himself in and then holding his hips tight up against Will’s and making little circles inside him, which makes Will throw back his neck and stutter his cries, Will’s cock jerking and dripping over his belly.

 

Hannibal has to touch him, and it doesn’t matter, here and now, if there’s nothing to see between them, if where they meet and join is hidden and dark and a secret wonder.

 

He lets himself fall forward, over Will’s body, getting his arms under Will’s knees to help him stay at the right angle, almost bending Will in half; Will nods frantically and puts his hands up, pawing at Hannibal’s chest and neck and bending in, straining, for a kiss, as Hannibal moves to jerk his wet cock for him.

 

For the very first time, Hannibal comes inside Will’s embrace.

 

It’s blinding.

 

When he can see and think and hear again, he’s sprawled over Will still, both of them collapsed into each other on the sofa, which is decidedly not wipe-clean and will definitely stain.

 

Will is smiling up at him, sweaty curls pressed to his brow.

 

Gently, slowly, Will reaches up and strokes the sides of Hannibal’s face, the soft pads of his fingers over Hannibal’s stubbled cheeks. His eyes are wide and bright, and his eyelashes still wet.

 

“I have no idea how we do this,” Hannibal tells him.

 

“We’ve improvised OK so far,” Will says, and laughs a little. “I mean I don’t know either, but I think we’re on the right track.”

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And still there's more! [that's what she said]
> 
> Thanks hugely for the enthusiasm for this *g*

Things that make porn better than real life include the fact that, in porn, the pot of beautifully seasoned pasta puttanesca - which one might have been making for lunch before the sudden development of a sex event - never ends up boiling dry and starting to smoke and therefore setting off the kitchen fire alarm, jolting everybody from the afterglow. 

 

Hannibal sticks the pan under the cold tap as fast as he can, hopping and tripping as he stubs his bare toe on a kitchen cabinet on the way from the sofa to the hob, but frankly the meal’s ruined and the pan isn’t likely to do too well either. It was not, at least, one of his set of genuine Victorian copper saucepans, which would be irreplaceable, but replacing a $160 _Le Creuset_ non-stick isn’t ideal either. 

 

Sighing, he turns away from the tragic scene in the sink and looks over the room. 

 

Will is lying on the sofa, still, all messy and sticky and still flushed from throat to navel, and laughing. 

 

“I should have thought of turning it off,” Hannibal says, irritated. 

 

The truth is, he never feels in the greatest mood right after his orgasm. He’s always assumed that had to do with porn as much as anything - most of the people he fucks on camera he only wants to get away from afterwards lest they attempt to strike up conversation. He’s done scripted cuddling, sometimes, because there is a niche for that, for shots of him holding whoever he’s just been hammering and telling them they did good, quiet praise. But then, in the scripts he does things like eat pizza that comes in a box and listen to Elvis Presley. 

 

He’d not really thought about how that feeling might be different - or not - with Will Graham. A few moments ago, sure, Hannibal had been orgasm-blind and gasping, and Will was smiling up at him and maybe there’d been something inside Hannibal’s body connecting between the warmth in the pit of his belly and whatever was starting to quietly glow in his chest whenever he saw Will under any circumstances at all.

 

But then of course the pasta caught fire, with smoke, alarms and excursions. And that was the last of Hannibal’s jar of _Mediterrano_ organic non-pareil capers, too, and the farmer’s market won’t be on again for another two weeks. 

 

And Will is _laughing_ , getting up from the sofa, naked and gorgeous and ambling over, soft penis swinging, which is strangely, chokingly intimate, and trying to get Hannibal into a hug, skin to skin. 

 

“I don’t have much else to offer you for lunch,” Hannibal says formally, batting him away, turning his back to him. 

 

_Why is he feeling this way?_

 

_What is he even feeling?_

 

All he can do is inventory sensations; he’s almost shaking, his eyes are burning, he can’t believe he’s being so unreasonable about food when all he wants to do is be nice to Will, to celebrate that they’ve finally got together. And his anger at himself is just stoking all the irritation higher. 

 

This is why he doesn’t do people - other than literally, obviously. 

 

Because this has to be putting Will off, and Hannibal wants to say – out loud - that he has no idea why he’s acting this way, or why his emotions won’t make sense. But surely that wouldn’t sound much more appealing? 

 

“We’ll go out for lunch, maybe, then,” Will says from behind him, quietly. “And I’m going to go and shower now, if that’s OK?”

 

“Sure, please, yes,” Hannibal manages, waving his hand, and then Will is out of the room and the tight band of panic around Hannibal’s heart relaxes a little. 

 

Soon there’s the sound of the water running upstairs, and Hannibal finishes cleaning up the remnants of what might have been elegant lunch for one. After he’s given it a good scrub, he thinks that actually the saucepan might do OK. He goes to open a window to let the smoke out, and realises he’s still standing in the room stark naked. 

 

He pauses, looking down at himself. 

 

The $8 monthly subscriptions of several hundred thousand people to his streaming membership testify that he’s still sexually attractive, perhaps more now than even than he was when he was younger. He’s fairly slim, athletic, just a hint of stockiness at the middle. His chest hair is silver-grey wire, just like the long hair gathered into his braid that brushes right down between his shoulderblades.

 

His body is fine. But it isn’t all of him.

 

He’s aware of a very strange longing for the ability to be able to connect to Will on a different level somehow, show him what’s inside his own head like… like reading the ingredients on a box of food or something. He wants Will to understand him and he’s never felt like that about anyone, ever. 

 

In fact his priority, usually, is keeping other people out. 

 

And sometimes, like now, it feels like he’ll always be incomprehensible, even to himself. 

 

“Hey, you want to go up too? There’s still hot water.”

 

Hannibal turns. Will has come downstairs again, one of Hannibal’s towels wrapped around his waist, drying his hair with another. He’s still smiling calmly. 

 

Hannibal swallows, wishes for words. 

 

“I hate it when alarms go off,” Will says casually, coming over the floor. “Really raises the hackles, you know?”

 

Something in Hannibal’s chest untwists slightly. He takes a breath. 

 

Alarms do worry him. He was caught in a studio once when the curtains on a set caught fire from some tea-lights, because the director was a cheap shit and the producers didn’t bother to try with health and safety - decades ago, before he got able to pick his team and control his environment - and for a while the only door out of the room had stuck in the frame, and people had been screaming… 

 

Of course, objectively, he never thought for a moment that this situation with the pasta was like that. But perhaps it unsettled him anyway. 

 

Now, Will is walking calmly over to pick up his clothes and get dressed again. 

 

Hannibal wants to kiss him, suddenly, desperately. Wants to get Will close again even though it’s been a really strange amount of time since they’ve been in contact - not long ago but not quite moments ago either. 

 

But presumably if people like it in their porn, that means a statistically significant number of people like it normal life? And Will might be among them, as much as Will is a wonderful and unique being?

 

Hannibal pads over the floor and tentatively reaches out for Will’s back. 

 

He just pushed Will away, after all. Will would have a decent right to do the same.

 

Turning, smiling, with a sigh that sounds incomprehensibly like relief, Will moves into Hannibal’s arms at once. 

 

They’re both naked, neither of them hard, and professional instinct makes that feel like failure but one of the things that makes real life better than porn is that one doesn’t have to spend literally all the time maintaining an erection. 

 

Will nuzzles into Hannibal’s neck, lips soft and still wet with shower water. Will smells like Hannibal’s soap; it’s stupidly pleasing. Hannibal wants to get his aftershave, put that on Will too, rub up against him as well so their sweat is the same, mark him like an animal would.

 

Although he himself won’t be hard for a while, Hannibal can’t resist palming over Will’s ass and probing into the cleft between his buttocks – Will whines happily and widens his stance, making it easier for Hannibal to delve and press, and perhaps not incidentally the change is posture is also pushing Will’s own half-hard cock against the thickest part of Hannibal’s thigh.

 

Will’s barely loose any more, and he’s washed thoroughly, but there’s still a residual give under Hannibal’s finger tips and he groans at the feeling, shivers running through his groin, making his balls ache again like he only just came.

 

“I really do want to look after you,” Hannibal says, and feels his body heat with shame and not a little fear at having to phrase that like an apology.

 

Kink takes trust and maturity, after all, and not going off like another screaming siren when the pasta burns.

 

“You do, I know you do, you will.” With a shimmy, Will somehow bends slightly, bears down or something – manages, in any case, to take Hannibal’s finger tip, dry, into his hole, and gives out a shuddering sigh when he’s achieved that aim.

 

Hannibal can’t get hard yet, he just _can’t_ , it hurts to think of, but oh hell his blood vessels apparently don’t believe that, and it’s a sweet, sweet ache, maybe not unlike whatever Will’s feeling that’s making him mumble and complain and gasp and intermittently tense all over, and yet also keeping moving that tiny bit on Hannibal’s finger, like a small mouth suckling.

 

“But,” Will continues, breathless. “That doesn’t mean I can’t look after you too.”

 

“You did bring me whiskey, before,” Hannibal manages to say, because he’s leaning right over Will’s shoulder, watching his own hands working, and Will can’t see his face. They couldn’t be much closer now, but somehow Hannibal only feels the wish for nearness more strongly.

 

“Would you let me do something, now?” Will asks softly, and his hole is squeezing, squeezing, fluttering on Hannibal’s finger and Hannibal can barely speak, just nods hard.

 

They’re still both standing up, leaning into each other, braced in mutual support.

 

First, Will kisses his neck, and strokes his hands down Hannibal’s back, under the braid. Hannibal starts to move but Will clamps down everywhere, makes a negating noise.

 

“Stay in me for this,” Will murmurs, tone insisting. Then there’s a rustling sound, and Will is leaning out awkwardly for a moment, and then the snap of a cap and Hannibal realises what’s about to happen.

 

Fuck, he’s almost hard, he really is, and this can’t be real at all.

 

The touch at Hannibal’s ass comes back, and now Will has a finger slick with cool lube, and he’s playing with the rim of Hannibal’s asshole.

 

Hannibal gets his legs a little further apart in a mirror of Will’s pose. It reduces their height difference, and he has to unhook his chin from Will’s shoulder and press his forehead into the muscle there instead.

 

“Oh fuck, yes, please, let me, please…” Will is begging.

 

Hannibal wants to laugh now – laugh bemused and delighted that he of all people could have found Will of all people and have him here now, like this.

 

“You can,” Hannibal grunts out, and then does laugh in surprise because Will’s cock twitches almost violently and practically kicks him in his belly, hot and not a little wet.

 

“Thank you,” Will whispers, and slides one finger in. He’s not built on the same scale as Hannibal, digits slender and elegant, and it’s not difficult for Hannibal to take it at all, and he huffs out a breath and presses down, sucking Will in as Will did for him.

 

And in answer Will’s hole clenches, and Hannibal remembers he could be doing even more mirroring here.

 

He pushes his own thick finger deeper into Will, and rotates from his knuckle, stretching round Will’s rim, rough and dry, and as he was hoping – as he felt he was starting to understand – Will gasps and sobs in what sounds like bliss, and loses all rhythm in his own motions in Hannibal.

 

“Upstairs,” Hannibal hisses, when he thinks he can’t take another moment, and they break apart, panting.

 

Will is pink and red and sweating again, and his cock bobs and quavers, sticking straight up in the air, and his eyes look glazed.

 

“I am going to take care of you,” Hannibal says, firmly, for both their benefit, and ushers him up the stairs to the first floor and the ‘sex’ bedroom, which is not where he sleeps and almost never used, but which is equipped with what they need now.

 

Inside the bedroom, Hannibal pushes Will, unresisting, onto the bed and pauses to kiss him long and deep. Will murmurs happily, and then starts keening and begging wordlessly some more, like he thinks that’ll get him what he wants more quickly.

 

Which, it must be said, is probably true.

 

“You’re like a naughty little puppy,” Hannibal tells him, and watches in amusement as Will’s cock thickens again, fluid running down it. “Oh yes?”

 

“Shut up, you’re weird too,” Will says, not unaffectionately, squirming.

 

Hannibal kisses him again – how did he feel like he ever couldn’t do that? – and turns to the bedside cabinet, opening the doors.

 

Will’s eyes blow wide open when Hannibal puts the plug into his hand. It’s nothing large at all, but carved of shining onyx, which means that right now it’s pretty cold and will sit heavily against the sphincter inside.

 

“Put it into yourself, Will,” Hannibal commands, smiling.

 

“I’m not allowed lube?” Will asks, in a small, choked voice. It really does not sound like a protest. His cock is positively dripping.

 

Hannibal folds his arms, tries to assume a neutral tone and expression. “What do you think?”

 

“I have to do what you say, you’ll look after me,” Will murmurs, like it’s a revelation, and his eyes drift shut on a moan. Then he gets his heels up on the bed, spreading his legs to expose himself to Hannibal’s gaze for the first time since they fucked. His hole is reddened, slightly puffy, and the stone plug must be soothingly cool and aggravatingly thick at the same time, Hannibal thinks, watching him push with it against himself, grunting, feet flexing and toes curling.

 

Hannibal leans in to rest a hand on Will’s stomach, careful not to get in his way, and Will’s eyes open up again, meeting his gaze with eyes damp and almost feverish, and Hannibal can read in the inward passage of the plug in the twitches and tiny winces of Will’s face.

 

And then – then, and he’s been hard and hot and yearning for this what feels like forever, even though Will’s the first to make him want it in his life – Hannibal gets up on the bed, straddles Will, and sinks his own wanting, slick body onto Will’s proudly jutting cock.

 

Will jackknifes so fast they almost headbutt, and Hannibal laughs.

 

He thinks back to the pasta, and wants to laugh even more. It was funny. It is funny. It is worth smiling over, because it’s all fine – Will is here, is with him, and everything is actually fine and apparently Will isn’t going to let him fuck this up.

 

Hannibal rides Will cock until his thighs burn, and Will goes wild underneath him, bucking and biting his lip until Hannibal leans in to kiss him, and suck that poor lip into his own mouth, at least until he gets close himself and can’t co-ordinate anything but that insistent, rhythmic quest.

 

Hannibal comes all over Will’s stomach and chest, and it’s deeply, stupidly, transcendently satisfying, over and above just the pleasure of orgasm.

 

Will looks down at himself, and finishes with a whimper, hot and sudden inside Hannibal.

 

Hannibal lets himself down, blankets over Will’s body for a moment.

 

It’s pretty peaceful, now, in his head.

 

One of the things that makes porn better than real life is that, in porn, when something goes wrong, you can just scrub over and go back to the start as if it never happened.

 

Or so Hannibal had always thought.

 

Maybe, though, there’s something to be said for what comes after the mistakes.

 

Hannibal holds on, and closes his eyes.

  
There’s a quiet glow in his chest, getting brighter.

 

“You do still owe me lunch,” Will says dryly, breathless.

 

Hannibal chuckles, and kisses him again.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Derived whilst thinking around the prompt: _Will kinks on Hannibal's cozy red sweater instead of his fancy suits. please and thank you so much! :')_ I hope you don't mind it's this AU, anon, please send along another ask if you'd like! *g*
> 
>  **Update Status** : I'm keeping this fic marked as 'finished' because my goal is never to leave it on a cliffhanger, but always each chapter with an ending unto itself, a bit like a series of movies. But there might be more in time *g*
> 
> Thank you again for all the encouragement of this random little thing <3

The general porn industry, and indeed most of the content pertaining to sex that Hannibal has sampled in his life, has always tended to place a premium on what might be called ‘first times’.

 

True, you can find single videos with second and third and even fourth times - depending on the number, gender and refractory period of the participants - but (leaving aside orgies as mathematically confusing), interest is apparently not considered high once the ‘times’ have reached double digits.

 

There aren’t any vids on the site where Hannibal’s work is hosted, for example, called _‘Possibly Dating Now Possibly Boyfriends’ Fourteenth Encounter, and One of Them is Very Tired and the Other Doesn’t Know What to Do About That.’_

 

Which, apart from any other considerations of human culture, the fetishization of virginity or the law of diminishing returns as it might apply to sexual pleasure, is a sad educational resources gap for someone with a relationship history like Hannibal Lecter’s.

 

He may even have Googled, in a fit of sheer desperation: _What am I supposed to do if the person I am possibly dating has possibly become my boyfriend?_ This had generated _22 Signs You’re Dating the Wrong Person, 32 Signs He’s a Keeper, When is a relationship a Relationship?_ and several more, some of which he’d gone so far as to click on.

 

Because the weird newness of the situation with Will Graham hadn’t ended with that first time they’d slept together since _Virgin Hole Boy Chronicles_. No, that sense Hannibal had discovered of being out of his depth, unable to define the space around him or the nature of what was between them - which was entirely unfamiliar and not at all comfortable - was also apparently quite persistent.

 

He couldn’t say he liked the feeling in the slightest, for all it seemed to have something to do with the kind of madness and crazed emotion that had lead lovers in history and literature to write poems, declare various violent vendettas and make ill-advised life choices.

 

And that line of thinking is dangerously close to trying to put a label to what he feels whenever Will is around and – bizarrely – sometimes even more acutely, painfully, when he isn’t, and doing that is very much not in the plan.

 

Every other relationship – if you could call them that – that Hannibal has been in has had a plan. The plan would involve seduction, mutual pleasure, careful engineering to avoid too much possibility of conversation, emergency exit if anything involving casual socialization or ‘family’ came up, and generally a smooth tailing off after the novelty had gone, which was rarely more than a few weeks or about nine encounters total, whichever was sooner.

 

A month ago, Hannibal too would have said that no one with any sense or ability to choose would be interested in fourteenth times.

 

But he and Will have had sex well into double digits now, even if you only count it by meetings rather than orgasms, including eight nights where Will has stayed over at Hannibal’s house in the past three weeks.

 

And for the first of those proper sleepovers – the night following the day where Will had come to his door, burnt his pasta and fingered him to the point of frenzy – Hannibal had invited Will into his actual bedroom, his actual, personal, neat-sheeted, book-lined bedroom, rather than the staging room of sex where previous casual encounters were put in a holding pattern – often literally.

 

And, furthermore, that latter hasn’t actually happened with Will, as yet.

 

At least, not officially, not with any kind of restraints or any of the stuff Hannibal keeps in an ornamental chest in the ‘sex’ bedroom. Oh, Hannibal has held Will’s hips or wrists down with his hands, plastered himself over Will’s body to use his whole weight to immobilize him as he squirms, and has given suggestions – barely even instructions - that Will has seemed all too eager to follow, but nothing more.

 

That’s part of the problem - is it a problem? It’s certainly something, this way that the feeling he has around Will – the feeling that he can’t, daren’t identify, the feeling like warmth swelling thick in his chest, the feeling involving wanting to smell Will’s hair and nose along the nape of his neck, the hugging thing – seems powerful enough to have sucked the energy out of Hannibal’s usual confidence when it comes to kink.

 

Other people have in the past been his playthings – by choice, by eager consent – and he played them like a maestro. He could work out what they needed and give it to them, even when what they needed was not to be given anything at all but their own desperation.

 

And indeed, when he first met Will, Hannibal could think of any number of things to want to do to him, but the certainty of what Will in his turn might want and need has receded and receded.

 

And at the same time, the importance of getting whatever is needed, and getting it right, has grown beyond any pressure Hannibal’s ever felt before.

 

Because, to be quite clear, giving people things in the past was never really giving, never really about them at all.

 

And now time – and times – have passed, and Hannibal doesn’t have a clue what you do on the fourteenth sexual encounter, when you haven’t started out with a clear plan, when you don’t know how to define your situation or, even more outlandish, when your partner has come in from a long day’s hard fucking at the coal face of internet capitalism, and is tired and dehydrated and just wants to cuddle but offers to jack you with a sort of weary affection.

 

And – and this is the most disturbing part of all – you turn them down, because you’d rather be what they need than get what you want.

 

That kind of thing leaves you Googling stuff in the middle of the night that you have to exorcise from your browser cookies with fire from sheer embarrassment.

 

Hannibal’s not stupid; this is important, what’s happening here, this is really, really important and he hasn’t the first clue how he’s meant to proceed.

 

-

 

Google, _Marie Claire, Cosmo_ and the chatter of the make-up artists at his own latest shoot have left Hannibal with one fairly clear impression about relationships that last longer than a matter of days:

 

Anniversaries are important.

 

It’s not entirely clear when his… current association with Will could have been said to start. Their first time, after all, was over a month ago, also being the first time they met, kissed or exchanged names, but that was a job under contract, not a date.

 

They met up subsequent to that, but didn’t sleep together again until a good twenty days later.

 

No one has actually used the word ‘boyfriend’ or ‘couple’ as yet, at all.

 

( _Marie Claire_ feels this is a terrible sign and bodes badly, but a spirited discussion in an online forum argued that verbal definitions were never really necessary, or indeed the point.)

 

Hannibal sighs and does the math again; it’s not helping his plans much but it is helping him get through the boredom of fucking Tyrone Giorgio, this week’s ‘Virgin Hole Boy’, whilst under him on the bed Tyrone gasps too loudly and keeps saying “Oh Jesus!” in a Midwest accent that’s so evangelical in tone Hannibal keeps expecting the rest of the congregation to show up and join in.

 

Measuring from his and Will’s second time – arguably their first that counted – Hannibal calculates that their one month anniversary would be next weekend, if you use twenty-eight days as the interval.

 

“Oh Jesus, May and Joseph!” Tyrone cries out, and Hannibal grunts in annoyance and reaches down to bodily flip the man over, face down, in the hope it might muffle things a bit. In his peripheral vision he can see his director giving him a thumbs-up – religion in porn freaks the average person out although, of course, there are always very significant, and lucrative, exceptions.

 

Hannibal keeps thrusting, his hand resting square between the wings of Tyrone’s shoulder blades, rearing back himself a little to arch his spine and let his own long plait swing and brush his skin as he pumps his hips.

 

This weekend, then: their anniversary. And for anniversaries, he knows, you do, or give, something the other person likes.

 

And what does Will like?

 

Hannibal’s far from confident in many aspects of this situation, but he can certainly give a clear answer to that.

 

-

 

Will Graham is not just ‘fond’ of dogs, Hannibal has learnt over their month together – or, at least, Will’s fond of dogs the way a vampire is fond of blood or Imelda Marcos was fond of shoes.

 

When Hannibal is out with him, just walking along the street, he’s noticed that Will makes a sort of yearning movement towards any and every dog they pass, regardless of how mangy or smelly they might look and will, if he possibly can, run to them and pat them, hug them and let them salivate on his face.

 

And on the occasions – more so recently - when Will has come to Hannibal’s house after what seems to have been long and tiring day’s work, he spends half his time whilst Hannibal’s cooking, and he is supposed to be napping on the couch, instead on the website of the local dog pound, occasionally letting out cooing noises.

 

(Hannibal had early on taken the precaution of putting the taxidermied Dalmation from his collection – a fine piece, formerly owned by the fourth Lord Bath, preserved by that man under historically interesting circumstances in the eighteenth century – in the cupboard under his stairs, not being entirely sure how Will would react to it.)

 

That night, home alone after finally completely deflowering Tyrone from every angle with a retake for close-ups, Hannibal carries his herbal tea over to his computer and goes to look for further specifics of ‘Things Will is Interested In’ through Will’s search history there, which rather sweetly is completely visible and not apparently edited in any way.

 

It only occurs to him belatedly that Will might have failed to clear history behind himself precisely because he has been so tired recently, and that _22 Signs You’re Dating the Wrong Person_ might have flagged ‘stalks your internet history’ as a not-good thing for several compelling reasons.

 

Hannibal clicks through the links and searches in Will’s wake, stomach clenching tighter, bite his lip anxiously, and frowns.

 

-

 

“Are you free this weekend?” Hannibal asks, carefully watching Will’s face.

 

Will smacks his lips, blinking sleepily. His exhaustion, which had initially seemed to be just the effect one or two rough days, still isn’t going anywhere despite the last night’s sleep, and there are dark smudges forming under his eyes.

 

Part of Hannibal just wants to tuck Will up snug into bed, bring him his meals and ignore the issue, but even beginning to try that hadn’t worked out. Will doesn’t like to feel helpless, clearly.

 

“Uh, sure, I’m free - I think so.” Will smiles. “What did you have in mind?”

 

“A trip. Out of the city. We haven’t been out so much since…”

 

“Since we started fucking like bunnies, and then, uh, stopped....” Turning over in the bed and stretching, his whole body arched and then bowed for a moment, Will sighs. “Not that… I’m sorry about last night, I really thought I was feeling OK, I will be OK soon, I just…”

 

“I said it was alright, and it was. It is.” Hannibal gets up from the bed before Will can try and reach for him again. Will isn’t getting aroused easily at the moment – and just part of that search history had included looking up the prices of Viagra, no doubt essential for work purposes – and whilst there can definitely be ways non-reciprocal orgasms are fun, this situation is not, in Hannibal’s opinion, one of them.

 

Thing is, even though he’s just trying to do right by Will, turning the offers down only ever seems to annoy Will more.

 

Like now, Will’s sighing more deeply, irritated, getting out of bed and losing any languid relaxation he’d woken with, looking tired all over again.

 

And this is the place where, with another association, Hannibal would have been working out the most efficient way to extract himself from the situation. Where his only concern would have been to not have to bother with this any more. Where his own sexual frustration would have sent him elsewhere at the very least.

 

Or, conceivably, he might be trying to help someone like Will by making him feel helpless in the most direct, physical ways, until he could let go and accept it, until confinement triggered released.

 

But Hannibal isn’t certain of his ground here, and honestly he’s the helpless one.

 

Already having showered, Hannibal sighs quietly and goes down to start making their breakfast.

 

After a little while, he can hear footsteps on the stairs, and then Will padding up behind him where he stands at the hob.

 

Then - slowly, gently - Will’s arms going around him, hugging him close, his back to Will’s chest, Will’s nose pressing at the nape of his neck, rubbing up against the wool of the jumper Hannibal wears in the mornings with his pajama pants before he’s dressed properly.

 

“All I can think to say,” Will is murmuring, in this hushed voice like he’d rather keep it secret, “is that objectively? I still want you just as much as I ever did – more even, you’ve been so… And I’m just fucking angry that this has had to… that I’ve…” He’s shaking a little.

 

Hannibal turns around, takes him properly into his arms, hugging him close, strokes at his curly hair. In return Will winds Hannibal’s braid a few times round his palm, which Hannibal would hate from anyone else but finds bizarrely compelling whenever Will does it. Will’s other hand clutches up a fistful of Hannibal’s jumper, clinging on.

 

“And do you have any idea,” Hannibal can’t resist asking, after a bit of gentle kissing and fondling, “why it is that you feel so off-colour at present?”

 

He can almost feel Will making the decision not to tell. The tension creeping through him, the sorrowful shudder.

 

Will shakes his head. Shrugs. “Can’t think,” he says, casually, and breaks away from all his holds, going to lay the table. He knows where Hannibal keeps the cutlery now, knows about the spoon that’s just for using with honey and the saucepan that’s just for milk.

 

He fits into Hannibal’s body and his life, and Hannibal would give anything, right now, to know that he’s doing the right thing for Will to try to keep him there.

 

-

 

Three days later and it’s Saturday, and time for the anniversary trip, the nature of which Hannibal still hasn’t divulged.

 

Will comes to the house looking about as usual for him, recently, which is to say weary and pale, but he’s smiling with every appearance of happiness. He’s brought a bottle of wine and a six-pack of cola, and a packet of some kind of soft candy and some cheese straws – “Since you didn’t exactly tell me the tone we were setting here.”

 

Hannibal packs the wine and cheese straws, allows the cola to be placed alongside, and quietly hides the sweets behind the base liner of the car’s trunk.

 

With the convertible’s roof down, they set off into the sunshine.

 

Will’s wearing an almost sheer linen top that theoretically laces up to close the throat but which Hannibal suspects is intended to be worn as Will has it, with the laces loose and plenty of skin on show.

 

It’s funny, Hannibal thinks - giving in to temptation and sliding his free arm around Will’s back even as he keeps the other at the wheel, like they’re in a 1950s road movie – because he’s thought, and at length, about how he wants to look after Will and be nice to him, and yet that triangle of pink skin, flushing up redder as the sun shines down, pulls at every instinct that wants to tease Will about it, make him suffer frustration back in the most loving way, with all the tight twist of need/want that lives in the centre of Hannibal’s chest.

 

When they pause after an hour or so, Will gets out to stretch his legs and goes to relieve himself behind a tree. When he comes back, Hannibal is forced to notice what he’s been keeping his mind off whilst they drove and chatted about sci-fi films and ways to eat oysters and whether the dishes ‘angels on horseback’ and ‘devils on horseback’ were actually the same thing – that Will’s jeans are very tight and he’s fairly bulging in them, clearly semi-aroused for the first time in days.

 

Will leans over the hood for no apparent reason at all, sticking his butt out, and after a beat turns to look back at Hannibal, all blinking blue eyes.

 

“I could be a motorist stuck out here, waiting for rescue,” Will says in a low voice, just a little hesitantly. “And you could have come by to pick me up.”

 

Hannibal grins, walks over to press up against the lovely firm give of Will’s behind, letting him feel Hannibal’s own hardness, because above everything it has to be clear that he wants this.

 

But it would be wrong to take advantage – it _would_ , he reminds himself, closing his eyes and taking a deep, steadying breath through his nose.

 

“Not yet,” he says softly, and steps back, separating their bodies but leaning his head back in to drop a kiss to the side of Will’s throat. “We’ve got places to get to before lunchtime.”

 

As they take their places back in the car, he’s surprised to see Will looking pleased, perhaps more relaxed than he was before.

 

Are they going to be able to pick this up, later? Is Will still going to be inviting him in when he knows the truth, after the discussion they’re going to have to have?

 

It’s going to be a good day for as long as possible, of that much Hannibal is determined.

 

They set off again, and drive for another hour, making it onto the quieter roads, lined with green, heading into the countryside, passing fields and agricultural buildings in the distance.

 

“Now I’m confused,” Will remarks, but doesn’t press for more. He’s leaning back in the passenger seat, the wind ruffling his curls, soaking up the sun. Every time Hannibal looks over, sees him there, it’s a tiny glorious rush.

 

Hannibal cares a lot about his car, and not driving it into a gatepost by accident, but he makes sure to keep his eyes on Will as they take the turn-off to the single track, and catches the moment when Will sees the sign and reads it.

 

“Oh my god, Hannibal!” Will gasps, and laughs, and pinks up.

 

Hannibal can feel his own answering grin pulling his lips as wide as they’ll go.

 

He makes it, unscathed, into the entrance of the _Best Friends Farm Dog Rehabilitation Centre & Response Training._

 

-

 

“Can we go in?” Will is asking, bouncing on his feet a little on the grass.

 

“Sure. I know the owner, I phoned her last week.” Hannibal grins, closing the trunk, wine in hand, and draws Will in for the squeeze and a quick kiss that he’s clearly wanting, even as he simultaneously strains to get over the field and to the buildings and the dogs. “She was one of my co-stars, briefly. She invested well, retired early, now she’s here.”

 

Will beams, but there’s something wistful in his expression too.

 

“Do you ever think about retiring, Hannibal?” he says slowly. “Do you wish you had?”

 

Hannibal shrugs. “Honestly? No. I like the work, it suits me, I’ll do it as long as I’m able to get employment. But then, it does suit me.”

 

He meets Will’s eye, and waits for Will to look away.

 

Pushing down the anxious feeling, Hannibal locks the car and leads the way to the farm, Will soon hurrying up beside him.

 

As arranged, Beverley is at the front door to meet them. She is in the company of perhaps six or ten dogs who all greet Will with as much joy as he seems to have on seeing them, and he barely manages to mutter a reciprocal greeting at Beverley before kneeling down to shake paws and scritch behind ears.

 

“He likes dogs,” Hannibal says, redundantly.

 

Beverley raises an eyebrow at him and grins. “And you like him,” she says, just as unnecessarily – she knows well enough what it would have taken to bring Hannibal here, given that he greatly prefers his animals inanimate.

 

Then she laughs, and goes on through the house to a large airy kitchen that opens out to a huge field, to which the dogs dash, Will hurrying in their wake and pausing only to pick up various toys handily assembled by the doorway.

 

Hannibal and Beverley watch through the window for a little bit, and then Beverley starts making salad and Hannibal offers his assistance, and the wine, and she pours out two glasses.

 

“So he’s in the industry too, huh?”

 

“Yes.” Hannibal slices the bell peppers thin and clears his throat. “That’s how we met, actually.”

 

“Really? I love that.” Beverley has oil and vinegar, seasoning and herbs combining in a sealed jar, and leans back against one of her counters, all of which, Hannibal winces to notice, have paw marks all over their once-cream paintwork.

 

“I wipe down the top surfaces all the time, don’t worry,” she says, sharp as ever, and points the dressing jar in his direction. “Are you worried about him? You sounded worried on the phone.”

 

“Did I?”

 

“He’s not sick is he?”

 

“Not the way you mean,” Hannibal sighs. It’s weirdly pleasant to finally talk to someone about this, personal as it is. He looks out of the window to where Will is running about with the pack gamboling at his heels. “But… well, there was something I wanted to ask you about seeing ,whilst we’re here.”

 

-

 

Twenty minutes later, with lunch on the table, Beverley calls in the dogs, and Will, and the humans sit round the table whilst the dogs get a line of bowls to dive into, from which they fling kibble onto the floor in a frenzy and then pace round the room looking lovingly even at the salad.

 

“After we’ve eaten, I want to show you guys some of my other dogs here,” Beverley says, and Hannibal watches Will’s eyes light up like a kid who’s discovered he has two Christmas stockings. “This is just the main house, there’s the rehab place over in that building where my volunteers work, and some dogs stay there though most get taken to foster homes overnight. And we’re doing some cool training work too, I think you’ll like it.”

 

Will nods eagerly, and wolfs down his food like his erstwhile companions.

 

Hannibal is vaguely aware that with anyone else he’d regard those table manners as a deal breaker. He reaches out and lays a hand on Will’s back, choked with the knowledge of where all this is going, even though he planned it that way.

  
Will looks back at him and smiles. When Beverley’s up getting dessert, he kisses Hannibal’s cheek.

 

“This is such an awesome day. You do take care of me,” he says, happily. Then a cloud crosses his face and he looks down at the empty space where his plate was, and makes some comment about the personalities of the dogs currently pacing round the floor which Hannibal in no way cares about.

 

Except that, when Will looks up, trying to hide the look in his eyes, that look does change when he sees two of the dogs playing with a rope toy together.

 

Hannibal goes to help Beverley bring over the fruit salad, before he can say something ill advised.

 

There is, after all, a plan.

 

-

 

The dogs getting rehab for various injuries, often the ones that first brought them to the shelter in town that Beverley works with, are actually quite interesting, and Hannibal is happy to spend time reading about physiotherapy schemes in a Veterinary Science journal whilst Will gets to know the patients and helps out with some agility practice on a series of ramps for an Alsation with a missing leg.

 

In fact it’s Will who comes to draw him away, eventually, sidling up and hugging him as he’s started to get into to the habit of doing, and telling him it’s time for the next building.

 

Maybe Hannibal has been procrastinating reaching this moment, just a little.

 

“Did Beverley tell you about the next building?” he asks, as casually as he can.

 

“Not really.” Will’s all smiles. He looks as well as he has in weeks.

 

Hannibal walks with him out of the rehab barn, and for the second time in the day, he’s watching for when Will notices the sign by the door.

 

“Oh, that’s cool,” Will begins to say, although there’s a slight consciousness in the way he moves, the carefully casual way he speaks, turning to look at Hannibal.

 

Hannibal was going to explain everything now, but he just can’t. He pushes on through the door of the next building instead, and there’s another large space, and a volunteer lying on the ground whilst a golden retriever noses anxiously at her and then licks her face, at which she sits up and praises him.

 

Will’s gone very tense.

 

Hannibal turns to look at him, licking his lips, searching for words.

 

Behind them, Beverley’s also come in, but she keeps a distance, and goes over to talk quietly to the volunteer, ushering the other woman back towards the far wall as she distracts her.

 

“Did I… Did I do it and you didn’t tell me?” Will’s voice is tight. “I usually do know, I didn’t, didn’t I…?”

 

“No, not with me. I saw your search history,” Hannibal says quickly, like that’s supposed to be a comfort.

 

“You…” Will’s eyes widen, he takes a deep breath. “Nice. Classy.”

 

“I wanted to find what you liked for this anniversary, and I thought…”

 

“You thought you’d take me to see seizure response dogs? For what? Some kind of… is this a joke?”

 

“You like dogs.”

 

“You did not just fucking say that.” Will’s eyes are bright, too bright, his fists clenched at his sides.

 

“I had discovered you are suffering absence seizures. Or you think you are – you need to see a doctor, I can…” Hannibal takes a breath, stays on track – not something he usually has a problem with. “I wanted to let you know I knew, somewhere where it would be clear you had choices, that there were… ways forward.”

 

“’Sorry about the seizures, your consolation prize is this dog’?” Will shakes his head, turning away. “Yeah, that’s a sentiment that’ll catch right on. Like what, like…?” He waves his hands. “I can’t _afford_ a dog, Hannibal, I can’t keep a dog where I live, I can’t work my hours and keep a dog and this is just…”

 

“Live with me.” The words are out before Hannibal can stop them. “Move in with me, for a while at least. You could keep the dog at my house and…”

 

“What? What did you just say? How long have we known each other?” Will’s flinging up his arms now, voice rising, distressed. “And at your house? With all your precious things? You hate dogs.”

 

“But I love you.”

 

Will stares at him, mouth open.

 

Then he turns on his heel and strides back out through the door.

 

-

 

Will has gone halfway across the field the building sits in, and now he’s just standing there with the long grass waving around his knees, his face in his hands.

 

Slowly, Hannibal comes up to him.

 

And then he waits.

 

After a long while, Will heaves a deep sigh, scrubs his palms over his eyes once more, and turns round.

 

“Is this why you won’t…” Will takes another heavy, shuddering breath. “You used to be always talking about the things you wanted to do to me, in bed, but you haven’t… You think I’m too fragile?”

 

The thing in Hannibal’s chest twists tighter, hotter.

 

It’s horrible, trying to put it into words.

 

But then it must have been pretty horrible for Will, finding his secrets known.

 

“I’ve never felt like I do about you, not about anyone,” Hannibal tells him, still keeping his distance but with his hands out, open. “And I don’t know what to do. I want to be what you need.”

 

“You’ve known me, like, a month, you can’t just ask me to move in.” Will’s voice is cracking, he sounds genuinely bemused.

 

“Why not, if I like having you in my house? I like waking up with you. I like it when you’re there when I fall asleep.”

 

Slowly, Will takes a step forwards, closing some of the gap between them.

 

“There’s something going on with me, Hannibal, and I don’t know what it is. And it might be shit, like really shit. I don’t want you to have to look after me. Not like that. I don’t want…” He stops, red in the face, eyes bright again. “This is not my life, I didn’t want this to be my life - I’ve always been odd, sure, but not… I don’t want this!”

 

“It’s not clear yet what ‘this’ is – not clear what exactly is happening to you. And I want to help.”

 

“You can’t just…”

 

“If you are suffering, Will, that… upsets me.” Hannibal ducks his head; it’s hard, this honesty. “You can break up with me if you like, if… if we are together now, and if you don’t want to do that anymore, I won’t even… But you cannot change the way I feel about you. And yes, I need you enough that I would let you have a dog in my house – I could put things in storage, they’re only things.”

 

Will steps forward again, and crumples into Hannibal’s arms, leaning in against his chest, shaking.

 

After a while, Will winds Hannibal’s plait round his hand, grips tight, and Hannibal sighs with bone-deep relief, and holds him closer still.

 

-

 

They were both still rather shaky as they finally broke apart, and Hannibal actually found himself leading the way back to the car and digging the repellant pink and purple candy out from where he’d hidden it, and then following it up with the soda.

 

Sugar does help.

 

“This, obviously, it pretty much my kind of a place,” Will says in the quiet, as they stand now side by side, leaning back on the convertible’s hood, drinking from their cans and staring out at the fields and the reddening sky. “But I’m going to suggest you don’t try and combine life-changing revelations and anniversary treats next time.”

 

Hannibal looks over at him, and then draws him in for an apologetic kiss, both their mouths tasting of warm caramel.

 

“So,” he answers when they break for air, trying to keep his voice casual, “you are, as they say, sticking around?”

 

“Seems like it.” Will is grinning shyly. “Since for some reason you apparently want me to.”

 

Hannibal has to bite back all the things he wants to say to that.

 

“I thought I was going to lose you, over this.” Will says softly. “I wouldn’t have blamed you for… At least, whenever I’d finally psyched myself up to tell you about what was going on with me. Unless the lack of sex put you off first.”

 

“Lack of sex has never been a problem in my life,” Hannibal points out with half a smile. “If I can be close with you, if you want me there, that is not something which requires the erectile tissues.”

 

“But that way’s more fun.”

 

“And we’ll get back to it,” Hannibal promises him. “We’ll figure out how to get you well, what you need. You can…”

 

Will interrupts him with a gentle kiss, his tongue going along the seam of Hannibal’s lips, strangely chaste.

 

“Let’s not talk about doctors and houses and jobs any more today, yeah? Let’s just… it’s our anniversary, after all, let’s just…” he sighs, and leans into Hannibal’s body again.

 

Hannibal curls round him, the twisting in his chest all loose and glowing, like tendrils could expand out and wrap round them both, safe.

 

“Are you free for dinner, later?” Hannibal asks softly, and his heart catches at the smile he gets in return.

 

“Sure,” Will says. Then he coughs. “Though before we go, maybe we should go say goodbye properly to Beverley?”

 

“And her dogs?”

 

“And her dogs,” Will agrees in a serious voice.

 

-

 

Back at Hannibal’s house, after a drive that seemed like it was never going to end, and not helped by Will falling asleep in the passenger seat and making adorable snoring noises, Will – now very much awake – draws Hannibal immediately upstairs.

 

“Shower first,” Will insists. “I’m about fifty percent dog hair by volume at this point and you’ve been very good about all the drool on my face when you’ve been kissing me, but I bet you want to wash.”

 

Hannibal had in fact forgotten that detail, and feels a brief twinge, but the invitation of a shared shower helps push regrets about missed opportunities with wet wipes to the back of his mind.

 

There’s been no suggestion of sex; Hannibal isn’t expecting that, but he’s pleased for several reasons to note that Will does flush, from his neck all down his chest, when they’ve finished undressing and are looking at each other, and although his cock remains soft his nipples have tightened into little points.

 

Hannibal is hard, and tries not to be apologetic about it because he doesn’t think Will would appreciate that.

 

They get under the shower stream together, both perhaps a little bashful. They’ve done this before, in earlier weeks, but it was sexual then, and there was a definite focus that now, in its absence, makes the nakedness and closeness strangely more profound.

 

Will blinks at him, and then reaches for the shower soap – Molton Brown ‘Silver Birch’, the only kind Hannibal will tolerate in his house – and squeezes a generous glop onto his palm before reaching out and tentatively going to rub it onto Hannibal’s chest.

 

Pushing himself out, welcoming, proud, Hannibal presents himself for grooming and watches, gaze torn between the sight of Will’s hands lathering and rubbing over his pecs, thumbs plucking his nipples with each stroke, and the way Will’s eyes are watching it too.

 

After a while, Hannibal picks up the bottle himself, and starts soaping Will’s back in long, smooth, soothing touches. He covers Will’s shoulder blades and down his spine and then the luscious jutting curves of his ass.

 

And Hannibal’s arousal isn’t going anywhere, but it’s gone into the background somehow, a sizzle that isn’t unsatisfying.

 

Then, though, Will’s hands go lower, and he starts to wash Hannibal’s balls and very carefully move on his straining cock, and Hannibal grunts and has to widen his stance so as not to fall over.

 

“There’s no need,” he points out.

 

“If you told me you wanted me to, then I wouldn’t do it.” Will reasons, smiling so softly. “But it’s your anniversary too, you know, and I want this. I need this, Hannibal.”

 

Hannibal holds his gaze, stares, reads, judges.

 

Then he relaxes, despite the throbbing between his legs, and smiles back.

 

“Then take it, please,” he says, with happy certainty, and takes the precaution of gripping onto the purpose-built grab-bar on the wall before Will’s hands get moving on him again.

 

The frankly demonic look of glee in Will’s eyes as Hannibal trembles and quivers under his touches is as much like himself as he’s looked in weeks.

 

-

 

Eventually, they get out of the shower actually clean and got to towel each other off. Will’s been more and more tactile, barely letting his hands off Hannibal since Hannibal came, more and more confident with Hannibal’s body in a way it’s good to see, and feel, once more.

 

Hannibal’s folding up the towels to put back on the rail, and Will goes to the airing cupboard, getting out clean clothes. He’s borrowed Hannibal’s stuff before - generic things that Hannibal keeps in a different cupboard for the purpose of overnight guests; casual trousers and cheap t-shirts.

 

This time, though, Will picks up Hannibal’s favourite red woollen jumper and, once he’s sure he’s got Hannibal’s attention, pulls it over his own head.

 

It’s too big on him, and the thought of the friction of even that soft wool against Will’s sensitive, responsive skin makes Hannibal’s cock twitch all over again.

 

“Yes?” Will asks.

 

“It’s something boyfriends do, so I believe.” Hannibal says carefully.

 

Will bites his lip even as he grins, and blinks a little faster. “Alright then.”

 

Hannibal goes over to kiss him once more.

 

This is their fifteenth time together, and Hannibal’s not sure it isn’t the very best.

 

Except, maybe, for what is to come.

 

-

 

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _Would love to read about Will getting jealous about Hannibal's work with a twink from your porn star AU..._
> 
> Thank you to **elfwhistletree** for a beta read on this chapter as I was trying to get it to pull together *g*
> 
>  **Additional Warnings** : Will's seizures and the process of being mid-diagnosis continue as a theme here. Some self-directed ableism turns up. As in the show, this is not really a realistic symptom cluster.

Visiting the hospital was never likely to have put him in a good mood, but today Will has managed to go from irritated to bored to sad, to now feeling the awful shoulder-tensing stiffness of angry-depressed, which is an emotion he’s only discovered since he’s been broken.

 

Not that he’s supposed to put the situation in those words - Hannibal doesn’t like Will using terms like that about himself or his condition, so Will tries not to do so any more, at least not out loud.

 

But moments like this, wandering out from the narrow linoleum dullness of the hospital corridors to the abrasive heat outside and afraid, for a moment, that the acid shine of the sun on a passing car will make his brain short out, all those words spill through his head anyway.

 

The truth is that his body doesn’t work, that he shuts down intermittently like a shitty old computer, and that is not functional, and no amount of Hannibal being nice about the situation will change that.

 

For that matter, Will can’t figure why Hannibal is being so nice about it. Would struggle to see why anyone would be nice, but most of all someone like Hannibal Lecter, who has money and looks and wit enough to have anyone, do anything, go anywhere, and instead has spent most of the last month holed up in his house with Will – Will who hasn’t been up for much more than cuddling lately, and only that when he’s in the mood for it, which isn’t often.

 

Most of the time, Will both intensively doesn’t want to be told that he’s OK, and desperately needs to be reassured that he is, and no one said that Hannibal – or anyone – could win at that situation, but it’s still a problem.

 

Ducking his head against the sunlight, Will starts walking along the pavement to the bus stop – no driving for him since his symptoms started – and sighs.

 

Hannibal has been so good – so unbelievably good - about the whole situation. About everything, pretty much, since they met. But when they met they were at least sort of equals – Hannibal was the bigger star, sure, but Will was working, they were on the same playing field more or less. And apparently Will had been attractive enough to Hannibal, then, to break him of his near-legendary dislike of fraternizing with his co-stars.

 

“You saw Hannibal Lecter’s house?” One of Will’s latter colleagues (Sharon, headliner of _Bitches Bite Back_ ) had said to him, amazed, whilst they both got sprayed down with more baby-oil between takes. “Like, I heard it’s super weird?”

 

Will had shrugged. He was about to share details of his personal life like he was about to saw off his arm in any case, but besides that he hadn’t liked her tone. Maybe, objectively, Hannibal was a little weird, what with the taxidermy and the entire dresser given over to saucepans arranged in perfect size order and his taste in shirts, but Will hadn’t felt anything but comfortable the whole time he’d been visiting the place.

 

At least, back when he’d had that conversation, when he’d been well and functioning and in the glow of first attraction, that had been the case.

 

Now, and for the last couple of weeks, Will has been the sad friend who needs help and support and no matter Hannibal’s intentions, it’s changed the dynamic between them. Will isn’t currently making any money besides his modest royalties from older films, although the studio have a just about decent sick pay scheme, at least relatively speaking. He’d still be living on pot noodles and sugar sachets, though, if it wasn’t for Hannibal. Will has been rubbish company, he knows that, and shittier still as a bedmate, because, when he isn’t just lying there useless, he’s sweating and having the screaming night terrors, but all the same Hannibal keeps acting like he wants Will around. In fact he’s still letting Will live almost full time in his massive, weird house, and even if that’s just because he’s worried Will could collapse in the shower and die alone, and he doesn’t want that on his conscience, it’s still nicer than half of most people would be.

 

It’s Hannibal’s house Will is due to go back to after this stupid, distressing neurology appointment, but he’s not relishing the prospect.

 

Well that’s a lie – it’s too hot out and the sun is beating on the back of his neck and he would just love to get to the pitcher of homemade lemonade in Hannibal’s fridge, but he wants that with a sick, helpless wanting that feels like weakness.

 

He can’t afford to get used to being cared for.

 

He’d had to sit for nearly an hour waiting for the neurologist, and then after the consultation she’d said – frowning an unreadable frown – that likely an MRI wouldn’t show anything, but that they needed to exclude ‘organic issues’, and they could actually scan him that day if he could wait, and then schedule the EEG for as soon as possible, but likely the next week.

 

And the stupidest thing was not how Will had wanted to run away and forget the whole thing, like if he didn’t _know_ whether it was brain cancer or being crazy clearly it could never be either, or how he’d felt scared of the MRI machine like he was a child again, but that he’d wished – physical wanted, yearned – for Hannibal to be there with him.

 

In the last months he’s let himself get used to having Hannibal to lean on, to turn to, and right now that feels like just the most fucking stupid thing ever.

 

Anyhow he’d sucked it up, tried not to shiver and tried not to blush about the shivering, and put on a backless gown and earplugs and waited another two hours in a plastic scoop chair whilst his feet got cold. Then there had been the hard, white, plastic sarcophagus of the scanner, which clicked and thumped when he was in, like the walls were going to crash down in around him.

 

That done, changing back into his clothes, he’d eaten some mints and tried to pull himself together, let it all run off his back like just another challenge.

 

He’d planned to go to the local mall and run some errands after his appointment, but it was too late now, everything would be shutting, even if he felt he could face the crowds. On the other hand, it was still early in the evening compared to Hannibal’s filming schedule, and it would be a long, lonely wait with only the taxidermy room and Hannibal’s collection of edible pot plants for company. And increasingly he’s been feeling like he’s doing something wrong, like he’s trespassing, whenever he’s alone in Hannibal’s house. He makes himself instant coffee (not daring to use the fancy Italian machine) and sits in front of the TV, always paranoid in case he whites out and spills his drink or breaks something, slumping to the side.

 

Before, he’d known where he stood in that house – suitor, guest. But this role, now, is not one he knows how to play. He’s never had anyone try and help him out in his life the way Hannibal has.

 

Hannibal had, in fact, offered to take the day off and come along to the appointment, but Will had declined on a knee-jerk, not wanting to be any more of an imposition, not wanting to feel like any more of a dependent.

 

Hannibal calls them _boyfriends_ , seems to think he wants the whole nine yards, talks about mutual support, but Hannibal – as far as Will can tell – has never been in a long term relationship. Hannibal doesn’t know that infatuation ends, and that the sex-glow wears off and it’s just like being the last two people who missed a train, stuck together on a platform waiting to go somewhere else, forced to keep up a conversation.

 

Love is a gloss they use to sell pornos and rom-coms, a carrot to keep people getting up in the morning and going to work. It tricks people into buying mortgages and diamonds. It’s never, in Will’s experience, amounted to much in itself.

 

The day he met Hannibal, Will had the best sex of his life, even though it was a porn shoot, and for all his lack of confidence in his own sexual skills, he’s kind of convinced Hannibal had a good time too. How can it not be downhill from there?

 

Hannibal used to keep talking about the things he wanted to do to Will in bed. And maybe they were working up to them, at one point. Maybe that could have been good, maybe even fantastic. Maybe that heat could have kept all their illusions alive a little longer than most.

 

Will kicks a can off the pavement in front of him vindictively.

 

But then of course everything in Will’s life inevitably went to shit, all over again.

 

For the last month or so, at Hannibal’s side most days, there have been some times when he will admit, even to himself, even now, that it has been lovely. Sometimes Hannibal cooks and Will lays the table, and they talk for hours on every topic under the sun, and then they sit on the sofa like some couple in a sitcom and he feels almost normal, but then Will _remembers_. And more often than not he remembers because he’s suddenly found himself blinking and sinking into the knowledge that he’s done it again, lost himself for a moment, gone absent, and Hannibal will be staring at him with all this stuff behind his eyes that Will can’t begin to figure out.

 

The times that it’s good only make the ways it breaks so much harder.

 

They haven’t had sex in a pretty long time. Will wants it, often, can wake up – in a normal way, just from sleep – hard and desperate, or can be in the kitchen watching Hannibal stirring a dish with all the affection Will might use to pet a dog, and get struck with fierce longing even if it isn’t arousal per se.

 

But reaching out in those moments, trying to act on his impulses, that would only run the risk of failing again, breaking again, and Will doesn’t think he could stand that.

 

That might bring about the moment when Hannibal realises he doesn’t want to do this any more, and as pathetic as it is, Will wants to delay that moment as long as he can.

 

Even if that too runs a risk, the risk of forgetting that up till now he’s always been fine on his own.

 

In one sense of course – Will lets out half a bitter laugh, not caring if it makes the other pedestrians stare oddly at him – he’s not alone at all, and that’s in terms of being Hannibal’s exclusive sexual partner. No, lucky for Will, his boyfriend gets his rocks off three days a week and overtime Saturdays for a living.

 

And Hannibal had a shoot today, a pretty big one, and that was another reason Will justified telling him not to come to the hospital, because he’s not going to pretend he doesn’t know he’s spending Hannibal’s money for him, eating the food and using the air con and turning lights on and running the water for the long, hot baths Hannibal likes encouraging him to take.

 

It’s been over a month since Will worked. His studio has rules, and Hannibal insisted and since Will’s been nowhere near in the mood for it, he couldn’t really argue with any of them. But living off Hannibal feels dangerous the way getting used to having him hold him does, or even just looking forward to a bath or a homemade lemonade brought on a tray to him during it, delivered with a kiss.

 

Will’s heart has started to race, he can feel it in his throat. He should have eaten something before he left the hospital, really, he’d missed lunch after all with all the waiting, but he’d only wanted get out of there and go… home?

 

Having crossed the street away from the hospital, Will pauses, his bus stop in sight.

 

If he crossed back over, and took the bus travelling the opposite way, he could go to his own apartment. There’s stuff there – DVDs, some music, his old MP3 player – that he could maybe sell on and raise cash from. He could at least offer to treat Hannibal to a meal out – or perhaps more realistically part of one, given the kind of places Hannibal likes. He could buy flowers. He could buy himself a new t-shirt and look vaguely presentable for once when they go to the famer’s market so Hannibal doesn’t have to wince to be seen with him.

 

Anyway it would save him sitting all alone in Hannibal’s house worrying about his possible effect on the upholstery, and staring at the walls and carrying on thinking too much.

 

It’s a long bus ride to Will’s apartment, a good half an hour longer than to Hannibal’s place, and halfway through a wave of tiredness washes over him, followed by a fresh anxiety about whiting out on the bus, and he regrets the decision, but he’s committed now.

 

Inside his front door, he scoops up his post – bill, junk, another bill – and looks round his space, which has that weird intense smell of a place left too long alone, and after Hannibal’s mansion looks even smaller and emptier than usual. Hannibal’s never been here, and never will be if Will can help it. That’s one illusion he can at least try to preserve.

 

One sanctuary he can keep safe to retreat to, after everything else goes to hell.

 

He takes a quick look around, checking no taps are dripping and that he remembered to unplug stuff the last time he was here, and then grabs a duffle bag to put a few things in to take to Hannibal’s and sort out.

 

Except, of course, that will prompt questions and then Hannibal will be nice and possibly confused and possibly hurt. Hannibal doesn’t know yet that supporting Will isn’t what he actually wants to be doing, and Will doesn’t actually want to offend him.

 

Sighing, Will sinks onto his bed and reaches out for his bedroom drawer where his old laptop is stowed. Taking it to Hannibal’s had seemed too definitively like moving in, but listing some stuff here and sorting out the finer details at Hannibal’s might be the best answer now. He can always claim he’s on Facebook.

 

When he opens his browser, he realizes the _Virgin Hole Boy Chronicles_ tab is still there.

 

Although the site had been a solid corner of Will’s… rest and relaxation, as early as this time last year, Will had never been a fan of Hannibal’s streams. That was the weird thing. For all his fantasies about his first time with a male partner and his weird, faceless dreams of big strong bodies over his own, older men holding him down and showing him what he wanted, he’d found Hannibal Lecter – whose face was plastered all over the homepage – a bit much, a bit obvious.

 

Or that had been what he’d told himself. Since, he’s reflected that maybe he was more scared of the intensity of his own reactions than anything.

 

He’d only really watched Hannibal’s stuff once he’d heard he was being partnered with him for his own shoot. He’d wanted to check his size, given he’d be Will’s first dick.

 

He’d thought it would be a good thing, getting off that way the first time with someone he wouldn’t have too much connection with. Maybe the average person didn’t experiment sexually by applying for a job in a porn shoot, but Will had been an adult film actor for decades, it had come to mind easily enough and had felt like a fairly safe choice.

 

And then, that day on the shoot, there had been Hannibal, himself, in person, and Will had never been so glad in his life to be terrified…

 

Will feels a surge of heat between his legs. Apparently this is one of the moments he’s going to feel into it.

 

He looks again at the browser tab, and then at the time displayed in the corner of his screen.

 

Hannibal’s stream airing today should still be live.

 

Will could check in on it.

 

He could take another look at Hannibal at work, see if it feels any different watching now to before. He could…

 

Shaking his head at himself, Will lets the stupid excuses vie for plausibility, there’s no one here to judge him, even if he knows himself they’re all bullshit.

 

So he could check in on Hannibal, he reasons to himself like he’s going to weigh this decision rationally. He could learn something about Hannibal’s needs or likes. He could pursue this feeling of arousal whilst he’s at least got some semblance of libido and try to perk up enough interest to be a full participant in bed tonight rather than feel so unable to turn on that he might as well be a phone with a dead battery.

 

This is clearly a super-great, excellent idea.

 

He’s not doing this because he’s sad, lonely, more than a little jealous, all too ready to lean into the feeling of doom and feed it.

 

Will’s hands are trembling, but he keeps his fingers moving on the laptop touchpad, clicking on the _Virgin Hole Boy Chronicles_ tab. He’s feeling sick but he doesn’t stop. He logs in, and he

 

… staring into space, at the computer screen, at nothing, at swirling gifs of come-covered cocks, and he had another absence seizure, he checked out, he’s lucky the computer didn’t slide on the floor, he’s… something is wrong with him, some awful, mystery thing and he doesn’t want to fall into this loop of thoughts again but he’s…

 

 _Breathe for me_ , says Hannibal’s voice, and for half a minute Will’s twisting, trying to figure out how Hannibal could have got into the room with him but stupidly, pathetically glad that he is.

  
Then, of course, he realizes that the voice came from the computer speakers, from the video playing in the center of the open screen that he must just have had time to click onto before he whited.

 

It’s Hannibal there, live at this very moment from the studio the other side of town, and he’s with a blond guy who looks like something from a non-ironic corn advert. A blond guy with smooth-waxed, tanned muscles and a perfect bubble butt, his whole body toned, lithe and unbroken; a guy currently bent in half under Hannibal, legs spread wide to let him in, being pierced open and murmuring “Jesus!” every few moments, as well he might.

 

Hannibal’s back is curled over, his spine in a sweet sinuous curve, and he’s got his hands braced either side of the blond boy’s neck. His long silver-black plait has fallen forward over his shoulder and sways with his thrusts, and the man under him is opening, inch by inch – Will can almost feel it, aching in sympathy – as Hannibal presses in, in, in.

 

 _That’s right, that’s good_ , Hannibal is saying, low but calm, so assured, so proud-sounding. _Take it for me, that’s it, like that._

 

Will slams the laptop lid shut and only just stops himself throwing it across the room.

 

Yeah.

 

A+ excellent decision making, good life choices. Best fucking day ever.

 

-

 

By the time he’s made his way back over to Hannibal’s street, Will’s managed to come up with about a page full of sensible reasons why he shouldn’t be bothered about anything, and he might even pay them half the attention he did he reasons why watching the live porn was a good idea.

 

After all, he’s pointed out to himself over and over, Hannibal was just doing his job, and doing it well, as he has with literally hundreds of other actors, going back years. Hannibal might have fucked that ridiculous Middle-American pin-up – Tyrone Giorgio, Will learnt from the website afterwards, when he’d forced himself to go back online and do the listing he’d originally intended, like an adult – and they might have done two previous films together, but Will is the person in Hannibal’s house. Hannibal is going to be in bed, in the end, with Will tonight, even if they won’t, if Will can’t…

 

He’s not cross with Hannibal, he knows that much. Or only as much as he’s cross with Hannibal for not being able to tell him everything and nothing is OK at the same time.

 

This angry-depressed feeling, which has consolidated under his ribcage until he’s ready to scream at someone on the bus for taking the seat he wanted or playing music too loud, at the birds for getting in his way on the pavement, at the sun for shining, is really pretty much directed at himself. He shouldn’t be so broken, and that includes caring about shit that clearly shouldn’t actually matter.

 

And also? It’s not his fucking choice that he’s broken, and he doesn’t deserve this, and none of it is his fault and everything is wrong.

 

Will’s aware that he might be taking himself and his mood back to Hannibal’s house just to punish Hannibal with it, just to not have to suffer through it alone. He’s not even sure what level of guilt that operates on.

 

As well as the laptop in the bag over his shoulder, Will is also carrying a plastic bag from the pile corralled under his sink. In it there’s a half-used but still good carton of juice from his apartment that he put back and picked up again about five times as he tried to figure out if he was going to Hannibal to stay for a while, or to say goodbye, or if he was even going at all.

 

As he walks the final stretch between the bus stop and Hannibal’s street, the houses getting more and more high-end as he goes, he’s swinging the bag painfully against his shin, the corners of the carton bruising-sharp, and thumping his feet down onto the pavement like the force of impact could shake something loose inside him and stop this feeling, any feeling.

 

Hannibal’s car is in the driveway. Will stares at it, thinking about the trip they took to the dog sanctuary. A trip Hannibal planned so carefully and thoughtfully to make Will happy. A trip Hannibal apparently genuinely thought would be a gentle way to confront the issue of Will’s seizures.

 

Hannibal really doesn’t have the first clue about relationships, and how can Will possibly feel protective of him over that, after everything?

 

When Hannibal’s the one who promised to guide him, to help him, to _make_ him in the sweetest way?

 

When Will can

 

…“Darling?”

 

It really is Hannibal speaking this time, and the words swim up and into Will’s ear and he blinks, eyes opening, coming back from it, awake again.

 

“Darling, come inside.” Hannibal is standing a little away, perhaps not wanting to startle him, but with one hand reaching out. He’s dressed in neat, spotless soft pants and a sweater, his hair is wet from the shower and loose, fanned out over his shoulders.

 

Will shivers again. His bottom lip wants to quiver.

 

“It’s been such a _fucking_ day,” Will finds himself saying, words crashing out, dam threatening to break.

 

“I know. Come inside. It’s OK.”

 

It’s the tone of voice Hannibal was using on that stream, using with ‘Tyrone’.

 

“Please,” Hannibal says, voice cracking a little, and that’s different.

 

Will stares at him, long enough that he can see Hannibal worrying that he’s whited out again. But he’s awake and he’s looking, studying although he doesn’t know what it is he’s searching for or hoping to see.

 

Then Will thinks of something and frowns, confused.

 

“What’s wrong? Why are you out here looking for me? It’s not that late, is it?”

 

He looks at his wristwatch. It’s an hour later than he might have planned to be back in order to have gotten to the house before Hannibal, but still.

 

“We shot early, got finished quickly.” Hannibal shrugs. “Would have been quicker if my co-star had been anything more than an idiot. I wanted to…” He stops, trails off and takes in a shuddering breath, looking momentarily away.

 

Then Hannibal looks up at him, so much concern in his eyes, and Will can see reflected in them that he’s not been holding this together, not been hiding his problems, not been succeeding in making it good on the surface.

 

“Didn’t mean to disappoint you,” Will snaps out. It’s not what he wants to be saying but trying to fix this still seems like something he doesn’t deserve, and it’s been such. a. fucking. day.

 

Hannibal bites his lip, looks away and back again. He puts his hands on his hips, almost defiant.

 

“I am trying not to need so much to look after you,” Hannibal says, and his tone is determined but also a little hopeless. “I know that you don’t like it. But I cannot help what I want, and what I need, and I need you, Will, so much, and so of course I wish to help you and I want…”

 

Will gapes at him. He steps forward.

 

Hannibal’s eyes are glistening, lips thin with tension.

 

“I like it, Hannibal, I…” Will pauses, and moves his hands in the air in front of him, trying to shape the words. He sighs, steps in nearer still.

 

“I watched your livestream today,” Will says, and then holds up a hand before Hannibal can say anything. “It just made me think, again –and I was kind of, for a while, I was thinking anyway – that when you met me I was so much less of a mess than I am now. And how can you need that? Need me? Have you seen me? We’ve had a wonderful time together but you don’t owe me anything.”

 

He looks up. There’s a frown on Hannibal’s face of such sternness as he’s never seen.

 

“You do not get to tell me what I owe you,” says Hannibal, pointing his finger at him. The words come out heavy, thick with feeling.

 

He’s so beautiful, and so weird, and so incredibly wonderful and welcome, and Will’s brain apparently decides to nope out in the more standard, run-of-the-mill way at this juncture; he feels his shoulders shake, and quite suddenly and without any lead-in, he’s sobbing.

 

“It was such a fucking, fucking day,” Will tries to explain, gulping, and Hannibal comes towards him, arms half raised. He doesn’t seem to be sure if he’s going to be allowed to offer the hug, hesitant, and Will closes the gap between them himself, pressing his face into Hannibal’s wide, firm chest and inhaling the scent of him until he’s trembling again.

 

-

 

The thing is – as so often – that once Will is inside and warm, and has showered and got into the clothes Hannibal laid out for him – the ‘boyfriend’ sweater unsubtly among them, and been sat on the sofa under a blanket for a while whilst Hannibal makes the fanciest grilled cheese sandwich in existence, his perception of reality has, if not changed, maybe twisted round a few degrees.

 

Hannibal is good at so many things, but not least among them is making Will feel like maybe everything isn’t totally awful.

 

And – like most addicts, no doubt – when he’s there, with Hannibal, deep in and under, it feels like feeling like this is nothing dangerous at all.

 

Letting himself feel how he feels about Hannibal is something he only allows himself in drops at a time. Small golden moments when he lets himself glow with it. It’s been like this ever since their third proper date, when he’d had to go home for the washing machine and Hannibal had let him, all regret but not one second’s anger or aggression. That was when Will had known how fucked he could get in quite another sense than that Hannibal had already demonstrated to him.

 

Now Hannibal sits down next to him, angled towards him, and reaches out to stroke very gently at the side of Will’s shoulder. He’s been holding himself back, clearly, not even suggesting they shower together, and Will really, really needs to correct this misapprehension of what he wants.

 

“We need to talk,” Will says. “In a good way, I mean, I think in a good way? But we haven’t talked about this – which I know is partly my fault, because I wouldn’t let you before, but… And I’ve just basically,” he swallows, goes for it, “just basically moved in here and you buy our food and we haven’t…”

 

“We’re boyfriends,” Hannibal says, like it’s the magic code word that solves the maze.

 

“That means whatever we want it to mean,” Will points out, gently. “Finances, domestic arrangements, exclusivity – that’s all still on the table. We have to define it for ourselves.”

 

Hannibal’s face looks carefully blank. “And do you wish to change any of those things from what they are?”

 

Will sighs. “I wish I knew where I would be in a year, or even a month. I could be…” He shudders. “Something could be so wrong with me.”

 

“What did they say today?”

 

“They did a scan – that’s why I was late. Well, sort of. Anyway,” Will clears his throat. “This is the kind that actually images the tissues, and it’ll show if… if there’s something actually there. In my head. Later there’s one that looks at brainwaves, at the electrics, as she put it. She wasn’t giving anything anyway on what she thought about diagnosis.”

 

“The most likely cause of absence seizures is simple tendency, unexplained, in the presence of nothing else.” Hannibal leans forward. “There are medications. People live with the condition very well.”

 

“If that’s what these are.” Will shifts his hand, and with half a smile Hannibal takes it up into his own. Bringing Will’s hand to his mouth, Hannibal kisses his knuckles, eyes gazing softly at him.

 

“Whatever it is, I’m here,” Hannibal says earnestly. “Do you believe that? If you will not let yourself believe that you are worthwhile, will you believe that I think so, and cannot be swayed? Whatever happens, I am here with you, as long as you want me.”

 

Will stares at him. He can’t help it, a grin cracks over his face.

 

“Yes?” Hannibal asks, soft.

 

“Of course you figured out a way to tell me it would be fine, without having to tell me it would be fine,” Will shakes his head, waving away further discussion. “Don’t worry about it, it’s just… only you, only you, Hannibal.”

 

Still shaking his head, Will leans in for a kiss.

 

“I am paying you something towards rent, though.” Will says when they part. “It’s going to be a pretty token amount but I want to. Maybe, sometime, I can raise the amount I can contribute to the household, but I want to start.”

 

Hannibal presses another quick kiss to his lips. “That will be fine.” Then he widens his eyes impishly and puts a hand to his mouth. “Oh dear! That is what I am not allowed to say, yes?”

 

Will laughs, and swats at him with a throw pillow.

 

“Also, Hannibal? I know about the stuffed Dalmatian you’re hiding in the cupboard. Let the poor thing out and back with the collection, there’s literally a gap on the shelf.”

 

“Next on my list after this,” Hannibal tells him and kisses him again, long and slow and lushly tender, and demanding nothing but that he is.

 

-

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be a further chapter very soon for once, finishing it up over the next day or so, and then we'll finally get back to smut, I promise!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the encouragement with this, lovely people! Another chapter in this bunch in the next couple of days, and they will finally get it on *g*

It’s funny the things which, in context, can seem marvelous.

 

Will could never have imagined he would be so happy to be told his brain was on fire.

 

The call had come through from his neurologist only a few days after he’d had his MRI scan – days in which he’d been trying his best to feel the security that Hannibal clearly wished him to. Hannibal had been in the house – they’d played board games and Will had been indulged with takeaway food of the stickiest kind. A peace that couldn’t last but he’d been hoping for at least a week of it, and when he’d answered his phone it had been with not a little weary dread, assuming that the call was at best to discuss the timing for his EEG, at worst the diagnosis of something unthinkable.

 

At first he’d barely comprehended what she was actually saying – that the problem was pinned down, named and eminently treatable.

 

A long haul of inpatient immunotherapy had seemed like nothing to cope with at all, not with the uncertainty and fear almost entirely gone.

 

Of course – and Will smiles wryly to himself as he thinks it, leaning back in his bed and gazing out of the window of his hospital room – all too soon the body forgets. He’s been starting to be something like well, these last few days, with even the side effects of the treatment finally going away, and with that wellness has come impatience. He finally feels normal – at least as normal as he’s ever claimed to feel – and he itches to get out of here and step back into life.

 

Pick up the threads again, and there are so many, and they are colorful and golden in ways he would not have dared to dream for himself even a year ago.

 

The neatly stacked empty Tupperware boxes on his bedside cabinet catch his eye, and he can feel his smile widen. Hannibal turns up pretty much daily with pre-cooked meals for them both, and indeed he’s due any minute now, even though Will’s getting out tomorrow or the day after, depending on his blood results.

 

In the aftermath of the neurologist’s phone call, Hannibal had wandered into the room, presumably having heard his phone going but allowing privacy for the conversation. When he’d seen Will’s expression, he’d dropped onto the sofa next to him, eyes wide and terribly fearful.

 

Will had too-steadily relayed the news, still so shocked by it that it was hard for him to actually feel anything, phone clutched painfully tight in his hand. He’d been amazed to see Hannibal struggle to control his own reactions, to see the sudden flush of color to his cheeks and his nostrils flaring, the way he had to swallow.

 

“I believed you’d be fine,” Hannibal had said, in a whisper. “I hoped you’d be fine, I… But I feared…”

 

He really had feared, Will saw then. Not because that was the right thing to do or because he was a nice person, but because he had _feared losing Will_. He was, quite genuinely, that invested.

 

The rest of that day Will had looked after Hannibal more than the reverse, all told. Hannibal, who had held it together and been so strong and positive whilst they were waiting, trembled under the good news. Will had kept going back to hug him, and they would laugh at themselves together and then sober and hug some more, overwhelmed.

 

Hannibal had insisted on being there for the start of the treatments, at Will’s side as, the very next day, the needles went in his hands and the wires onto his chest. Will had appreciated that, but it had made him yearn, too, for when his body would be his own again, to do with as he chose.

 

Will’s had a lot of cause to appreciate Hannibal lately, but just as he’s been rediscovering what it is to feel well, he’s also been discovering what it is to feel wanting, to have the spare energy to notice afresh how… appreciable, Hannibal really is.

 

It’s getting to be somewhat of a problem – a problem he’s more than happy to have, all things considered, but a problem nonetheless – seeing Hannibal so regularly, being so close and yet not really alone, in a room where at any minute a nurse or doctor might walk in. Will has been quite the celebrity patient, in fact, and more than one posse of medical students have appeared unexpectedly at his door to take turns doing exams of his – ever diminishing – symptoms, enquire about his experiences and stare intently at him as they apparently try and commit him to memory.

 

And now, slightly before he’s really allowing himself to expect one, there’s another knock on the door, and Will calls out permission to enter with not a little trepidation.

 

It is Hannibal, though, thankfully, and Will is reminded, suddenly and viscerally, that however pleasant his memories of the man are, they’re nothing like having him there in the flesh.

 

It really must be getting hot outside – Hannibal has come in dressed in a loose linen shirt, open-throated, just buccaneer enough to be glamorous yet masculine. He’s wearing black, figure-hugging jeans and his hair is particularly neat today in a tight French plait.

 

“My dear,” Hannibal says, and moves over to the bed, depositing a large canvas bag on Will’s table as he goes, leaning in to kiss Will’s forehead. Will grumbles, unsatisfied, and then moves to kiss Hannibal’s lips in return, lingering.

 

“Good evening,” Hannibal responds, not quite levelly, as they part. “It is most pleasant to see you too.” He’s smiling as he goes back to the bag to unpack.

 

“Just you wait,” Will threatens. “When I get out, when I’m not stuck in here with only one suitcase of comfortable clothes, I’ll dress up just to frustrate you, and see how you like it.”

 

Hannibal’s eyes widen in studied innocence. _Moi?_

 

Then they narrow, and he downright licks his lips. “I do not doubt it, Will, and if you wish to threaten me I should warn you that you are not really going about that task in the right way.”

 

Will glares back at him, biting the inside of his mouth to distract himself.

 

They’ve talked about what the situation will be after Will gets out. They have to their credit gotten a bit better at talking about things.

 

Will is going to go home to Hannibal’s house, for the first couple of days post-discharge, not least because Hannibal looked like he might spontaneously combust if anything was suggested, and then he’s going to spend a week at his own apartment, just to make sure everyone has all the space they need, and to allow both of them to decompress from such an intense time as this has been.

  
And then, well… Then comes the future. And at least Will feels better equipped to face it than he has done in a long while. The stress of his illness was awful at the time, but the fact is that Hannibal did stick around through it, and that Will, overall, had been glad – more than glad – of having him there.

 

He doesn’t think he could get to a place where he could be glad to have been ill, never that, but he can see now the benefit of having gone through such a trial early on in the relationship; when Hannibal talks of dreams of the two of them living together properly, and for all the right reasons, nowadays Will can find himself almost ready to believe in it.

 

Will knows the steady return of his confidence - in flirting, in teasing, in being quietly affectionate to Hannibal without overthinking things – reflects the easing off of tension and fear about his health. But also how much he likes him, and always has, how good this really is.

 

And Hannibal has pushed nothing, shown no signs of impatience with Will’s progress. With each small step Will has taken, though, he’s been there, eager, delighted, ready to praise and encourage with small tokens like the food, or the way he searched half the town for the exact brand of ginger tea that would stop Will’s post-therapy nausea.

 

Now, as Will watches attentively, Hannibal removes three new boxes of varying sizes from his bag, and carefully opens them up, stirring the contents of the largest one with a fork. Will sighs happily as the aroma of the food wafts over to him.

 

“What’s on for tonight then, Chef?”

 

“Cassoulet with duck confit,” Hannibal pronounces the French words like he knows just he attractive he sounds doing so. “Baguette de tradition française, freshly baked,” he lifts out a French stick wrapped in a clean white cloth, “and a salad of endive with mange tout, olives and pepperonata. And, of course, the house wine.” This, Will knows, is the new bottle of freshly blended fruits and vegetables, a mixture of which Hannibal has been encouraging Will to drink regularly since the diagnosis. It has a lot of kale in it, and frankly isn’t to Will’s taste, but the rest of the food more than makes up for that and it probably is good for him.

 

Also, Hannibal has taken to tempting him to drink it with encouraging kisses between mouthfuls, which doesn’t help the sexual frustration situation but certainly acts as a motivator.

 

“And oh,” Hannibal gives half a casual shrug, just so that Will understands that this is the piece de resistance. “And a chocolate ganache torte with raw Santo Domingo cocoa nibs.”

 

“Mmmmmm, sounds good.” Will rolls the sounds of his approval around his mouth, smacking his lips.

 

Hannibal raises an eyebrow at him.

 

And yes, OK, perhaps that vocalization was veering a little towards the pornographic.

 

Which they would both recognize, after all.

 

Nothing the matter with that though, that Will can see.

 

Which reminds him that there is the question of his return to work to address, of course, now that he’s well, but he’s been pushing that to the back of his mind so far and he has every intention of carrying on doing so.

 

So now, leaning back against the raised head of his bed, Will lifts one knee, rubbing his thighs together, and arches his back just a little as he rests his head on the pillow, allowing his throat to bare.

 

“You don’t want to behave politely this evening, do you?” Hannibal whispers, his eyes all delight.

 

Will lowers his lashes, pouts - the whole nine yards. It’s so much fun to play with this again, to let his body be something he can use and enjoy and offer up as he likes. To take pleasure in inhabiting a physical being rather than feeling it’s something he just has to drag around.

 

To do this, this slow-warm, sizzling, building thing with Hannibal, _to_ Hannibal, and have it feel almost like a first time again, a re-familiarizing, an introduction like the one they might have had, if they hadn’t come together from the first under the heat of the lights, if Will had had the confidence to flirt in a more relaxed way rather than the desperate rush of their first dates, when he’d still be uncertain whether he was wanted, or whether, even, he really wanted Hannibal, when there had been so many more unknown quantities.

 

Hannibal had looked at him, back when they’d first met, with a hunger undiluted by affection, and as strange as it is that’s what Will’s been craving as he’s given in over the last few days to sensuality rising in him like sap, and spent himself in the tiny bathroom that attaches to his room. Leaning over the sink, stroking his dick one-handed as he grips onto the wall for balance, he’s had visions of a darker side of Hannibal in his head, a person who would help him by denying him choice rather than offering it. He’s thought – terrible, wonderful, hot-pulsing thoughts – of Hannibal’s face the time when he confessed that he wanted Will so much it scared him.

 

And Hannibal should have what he wants, and know that he is wanted, Will feels determined of that.

Now Will helps Hannibal lay the little table with the cutlery and crockery Hannibal brings with him, and enjoys purposefully letting their fingers brush across the narrow surface. This, Hannibal makes a show of indulging patiently, but beams under.

 

Hannibal has also brought wooden salad servers, cloth napkins, silver salt and pepper shakers and two elegant stemmed glasses for their weirdly green fruit smoothies. Will toasts him in it once they’ve sat down to their meal, and wonders about making a show of wiping his mouth afterwards.

 

He doesn’t want to overdo it, though, and he is salivating with hunger at this point and with food finally at the forefront of his mind, so he lets the moment pass and tucks in.

 

Hannibal’s cooking is, as always, completely delicious.

 

And Will does moan again, filthily and sincerely and without really meaning to, as he tastes his first bite of the chocolate torte, and when Hannibal gives him a _look_ has to protest his own innocence:

 

“The food is just that good, Hannibal! It’s more than I cope with! I’m sorry, I don’t think anyone could control themselves with the way that tastes!”

 

Hannibal shakes his head, fondly. “Your attempts to upset me still fall somewhat short, my dear.”

 

Will mutters back under his breath sarcastically, and takes an extra big forkful of torte, licking up the smears around his lips this time with showy skill. Hannibal actually blinks and looks away, and Will feels a wonderful surge of happy heat running up through his middle. The chocolate melts on his tongue.

 

The food finished, Hannibal gets a thermos flask out of the bag, and fusses about for a moment or two with small coffee cups and a tiny bottle of cream and a silver teaspoon. Will’s watching him contentedly, only to tense when he sees that there’s now something slightly different about Hannibal’s manner – he looks to be squaring his shoulders, thinking hard about something – and when he comes back to sit opposite Will on the bed, Hannibal clears his throat.

 

“I had a call from your father today, Will.”

 

“From Dad?” Will blinks. Of all the things he’d thought Hannibal might have been working up to, it wasn’t that. He’s half relieved – in the moments of anticipation, belly tight, he’d imagined much worse – but even as his muscles relax slightly, he’s still confused. “He’s supposed to be in Qatar through the end of the month and he doesn’t usually.... I’m sorry, I didn’t think… I wanted him to have someone to ask if, you know, if I’d… if the situation had gotten bad, but that was always unlikely and…”

 

“I had no issue with speaking with him,” Hannibal assures him, although his tone is a little stiff. Will frowns, studying him as, perhaps somewhat less than necessarily, Hannibal once more stirs and stirs his coffee, eyes fixed on the spoon’s path. He seems, still, to be pondering something, thinking a topic over.

 

“Don’t you wish to know what he talked with me about?” Hannibal prompts, looking up.

 

“Sure?” Will’s still frowning. Why did his Dad phone Hannibal, not him? He’s got Will’s mobile number and Will had made it clear in his email that he wasn’t so unwell as not to be able to speak.

 

Hannibal clears his throat. “He asked me if I was going to let you get a dog.”

 

Will can’t help a laugh, and it’s not entirely bitter. “Yeah, well, the parts of my personality that had imprinted on Dad before I left home, that was pretty much the most of it. He knew I liked dogs and guys, and, you know, nothing wrong with liking dogs.”

 

Hannibal cocks his head on one side. “He seemed… untroubled, by the fact that we are together.”

 

“He’s mellowed some over the years. I have too, I guess.” Will sighs, settling back a little once more. He sips his coffee, welcoming the renewed warmth. Talking about his father makes him uneasy, too close to the sharp thorns of regret. “And there’s the distance now he’s based in Europe – we don’t have to see each other that often, and once or twice a year it’s pretty easy to make the most of things. And Sandra’s great. She eased the way a lot.” He takes another deep breath. “So, what? He didn’t freak you out and put you off Grahams for good?”

 

It’s not quite the joke he wants it to sound like, and he’s more glad than he’d admit when Hannibal reaches over and clasps his arm gently.

 

“I envy you, being able to see your father with any joy, even two days in a year,” Hannibal says softly.

 

Will looks up at him, mouth opening.

 

But Hannibal is drawing back, shaking his head quickly.

 

Family isn’t a topic Hannibal goes to with any ease at all, Will’s known that from when casual, usual enquiries when they were first getting to know each other were rebuffed as if from a fortress. This is the first spontaneous pronouncement he’s ever heard Hannibal make on the topic.

 

Pushing back the table on its wheels, Will shifts sideways on the bed and throws his covers open at the side. He inclines his head, beckoning.

 

“Come rest with me a bit, huh? Help me digest.”

 

There’s a strange, beautiful vulnerability to Hannibal’s smile as he obeys, coming to slide next to Will and rest against him, one of his arms going around the back of Will’s neck to pull him close, the other coming to rest on his pleasantly full stomach, massaging very, very gently at the warm lump of food in Will’s belly.

 

After a career in adult entertainment, intimacy can come in strange ways. Will finds this particular embrace ferociously addictive, and though it makes him breathless with want there’s more to it, always, than just proximity of hand and skin, fingers and groin.

 

Not that he isn’t aware of those things too.

 

Will lets out a happy moan under his breath, and nuzzles his face into the curve of Hannibal’s neck and shoulder. Hannibal smells of the outside world, of car exhaust and sun lotion and salt-musk sweat. Will is conscious of his own vaguely sickly hospital scent, of the clinging aroma of cheap soap powder from the gowns and sheets, the kind of detail he knows Hannibal notices.

 

But Hannibal’s hand is stroking at his side, soothing, and gradually Will feels his heart rate slow, even with the afterburn of arousal that probably won’t go away until Hannibal does, if it goes away at all.

 

It might have to be another session over the sink with his right hand tonight, Will reflects, and sighs.

 

He closes his eyes, trying to focus on the scent of Hannibal to remember for later.

 

And although he has been feeling so well, obviously his energy levels aren’t quite as rejuvenated as he’d thought, because the next thing he knows he’s slowly waking up, and aware of having drooled rather extensively on Hannibal’s nice crisp shirt and shoulder.

 

“Shit!” Will wipes the back of his hand over his mouth. “Sorry!”

 

Hannibal puts down the magazine he’s been reading. It’s one of the ones Will bought off the hospital trolley, and Hannibal appears to have been doing crosswords mentally again, which is impressive, weird and actually rather useful in terms of multiple usage.

 

“Did I complain?” Hannibal asks softly. He kisses Will’s temple. “I am an avowed fan of your bodily fluids.”

 

“Yeah, OK,” Will shakes his head, teasing, but makes sure to keep eye contact. Hannibal is weird, and that’s a good thing, and he needs to be clear that Will thinks so.

 

Looking down as he shifts his posture, though, Will does notice that there’s a distinct tent in Hannibal’s jeans. Instantly his mouth waters again, just like there’s another meal on the table, and there’s a sharp spike of electricity through his own groin.

 

Will half reaches out his hand. “I want to,” he complains, sadly, knowing Hannibal understands why they can’t.

  
They can’t, here, they just _can’t_ , Will has to remind himself firmly. And really he wants this next first time to be special, not rushed or furtive, and so he has to wait for it.

 

Doesn’t mean he has to like being patient about it, though.

 

Hannibal stiffens slightly, and not in a fun way.

 

“Hey,” Will presses close again, demands his eye contact again. “I’ve said it before and it’s still the case now – you want to tie me up? Go for it. I want that. I want to… I want to have that with you, I want to be that for you. I know that I was… prickly, about being looked after but this wouldn’t be the same. You taking that responsibility from me so all I could do was lie there and… and take it? God, I want, I really want that, I can’t see how anyone could think that was a tough deal.”

 

Hannibal pauses, biting his lip. Then he leans in and kisses Will’s mouth, soft and savoring and in a way that does nothing for Will’s self-control.

 

“Nothing heavy, not at first.” Hannibal says firmly, and Will’s brain almost shorts out with all the amazing things he’s imagining might qualify as ‘heavy’. “But when you’re home, I’ll think of something.”

 

“I’m sure you will. You always plan the best menus,” Will says sincerely, and sighs happily, snuggling back again for the last quarter of hour or so before visiting ends.

 

He’s nearly out, he thinks, and smiles again, letting his eyes drift shut once more. They’re nearly there.

 

-


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Marking this as 9 Chapters now, as I'm pretty sure I know where I'm going *g*

Poised at the top of the main staircase in Hannibal’s house, about to descend for dinner, Will finds he has first to pause, catch his breath, square his shoulders a little.

 

He’s healed, and home, and the challenge now – not helped by the time with the illness and the way that confused and compounded everything – is to find some patience again. To take the time to get this right, for both their sakes.

 

After all, despite everything, he keeps catching himself thinking of Hannibal’s house as _home_. Not so much for the place itself, as for it being where Hannibal is.

 

Will wants to run down the stairs and blurt out every single thing he feels, and he knows the instinct to talk isn’t something he should entirely suppress. But then there’s the need to show Hannibal that he trusts him, trusts this, and that his request for Hannibal to take control of the pace between them for a while was sincere and heartfelt.

 

Perhaps inevitably they had rushed to be together when they’d first got back from the hospital and closed the door behind them, safe. They’d collided, drawn to each other fast as magnets, barely getting all the way to the bed before they were naked and clutching, the need so strong and shared between them to hold each other in every possible way, as immediate and as close as they could. They’d shuddered in each other’s arms as Hannibal’s wide palm held both their cocks tight-pressed together as the rest of them, kissing and kissing and kissing, and melting in unison.

 

That night had been necessary. That they had deserved, needed, after so long with so much worry. A reconnection.

 

But this is their new life, now, today, the fresh beginning, and Will had whispered, as they washed each other off in the aftermath of that fierce coupling: _Next time I want it to be your way. I mean, you in charge. You say when it’s next time._

 

And therefore he’s been aware all day, deliciously so, that from tonight they try something new.

 

All his life, Will has been cautious. He’s always tried to be in control. He was a careful child, by all accounts, and known as a studious, dutiful teen who no one expected to be surprised by. And when he’d worked out he was more attracted to boys than girls, it never crossed his mind to come out to anyone, or do anything but keep that realization a secret. If he’d not been quietly polite in his rejection the time Johnny Gregaris had come onto him at school, and if the gossip mill hadn’t twisted that on the way round to his dad’s golf buddies, he might never have told anyone.

 

And all that had followed his outing, in the mangled mess of his family life, had only made him more circumspect, even less trusting.

 

He’d got into porn – het porn, from the start - with a clear head and his eyes open. It hadn’t been meant as a more than a short term stopgap, but pretty soon it had made him good money and so he’d stuck with it. It compared favorably enough with retailing shirts and his time in the food services industry.

 

But although he’d been living independently by then, and although as the years had passed his father had had some changes of heart, Will still hadn’t experimented with men, still hadn’t been intimate, really, with anyone in the ways that actually mattered.

 

He’d managed to convince himself that signing up for _Virgin Hole Boy Chronicles_ was a career move, a sound financial decision. He’d maybe been thinking of how he was trying out something new on a physical level, but he had never intended to reveal himself in a deeper way there. No one in the porn industry made the mistake of trying to read anything into who, what or how you fucked for money.

 

And then… Hannibal. Hannibal had taken one look at him and Will had wanted to start talking, start telling. To open up in every way. To be seen, truly, and he’d never had that before, never found someone with whom he felt ready to reveal himself, in whom he felt faith that they wouldn’t misunderstand.

 

If he hadn’t met Hannibal he could have gone his whole life and never known what he was missing.

 

It’s only since Hannibal that he’s grabbed, that he’s dared, that he’s put himself on the line and been ready to risk everything, even security, for what he’s found he needs. The pain of fearing that he might lose all that when his illness had sent everything sideways between them had been unbearable.

 

But this is a new start, now, and Will wants to make that difference clear. Not to forget all that has happened – there are sweet and important memories, even from the dark times – but to show Hannibal, and himself, that he’s ready to try and put those doubts and that tendency to doubt behind him.

 

Tonight, then, Will has dressed up nicely even though they’re eating at home - at Hannibal’s house. Whilst he’d been ill, he’d never felt like doing more than grabbing a t-shirt and jeans from the top of a laundered pile, depressed by a strange admixture of wanting to hide himself and feeling like no one else deserved from him the expenditure of energy which dressing carefully would entail.

 

And so now, descending at last to the dining room, self-conscious as the girl in the teen movies who gets a makeover, he’s watching for Hannibal’s response to him, dressed as he is in his nicest pale blue trousers and a silky, colorful, quite feminine shirt that ruffles at his neck as it falls open to show his throat. The ensemble ought to impress Hannibal as a change in tone if nothing else.

 

From the look Hannibal gives him, though, it succeeds beyond that.

 

Will swallows, and feels his cheeks heat, not entirely unpleasantly.

 

Hannibal, it would seem, has also wanted to strike a change. He’s made sushi and sashimi for the first time that Will’s been around for, and the multiple elegant dishes are arranged on the dining table like art. It’s quite different from the meals they’ve shared before, especially from the time during the worst of Will’s illness where Hannibal mainly did comforting stews and easily digestible Italian food, and they ate in the kitchen, informal. Will certainly hopes those other dishes return in time – just as he has every intention to slob around in more comfortable clothing before long – but for now it’s pleasant to see Hannibal once again instinctively understanding the mood Will wants to set.

 

Will gives Hannibal a kiss on the way to his usual chair across the table from him. Hannibal murmurs happily under it, and caresses the back of Will’s head. Hannibal’s mouth tastes of soy and ginger – all the best chefs, Hannibal has insisted, must taste their ingredients – and Will feels a lovely long thrill over the fact that he _could_ push back for more, could keep the kiss going, could have Hannibal up against the wall in full view of the wall of taxidermied animals if he wanted too.

 

Hannibal’s expression suggests he’s more than a little torn by such an idea himself.

 

But Will makes it to his seat, and the meal begins.

 

Will is adept with chopsticks. He does not – not always – intend eating with them to be a particularly suggestive exercise but that can be hard to avoid as he curls his tongue around whatever morsel he has captured. Across the table, Hannibal watches him intently regardless, eyes deep and dark.

 

Hannibal has made no secret of the nature or strength of his hunger for Will, to the point of almost trying to warn him off; clearly he knows that to some people it would be too much.

 

For Will, though, it never has been. Every time he’s had Hannibal’s attention, he’s only wanted more of it. He doesn’t feel like Hannibal takes anything from him, or perhaps only that if he does that it is in a cycle, taking and giving becoming one cyclical flow of fascination between them.

 

 _What are you going to do to me?_ Will had asked, the first time he’d ever spoken to Hannibal. It had been a line spoken for a film, but it had come naturally. He’d known right from the start that crossing paths with Hannibal would change him, and as much of a challenge as that’s been to his cautious instincts, he’s never stopped craving it.

 

Or the way – and this is yet more compelling – he senses that Hannibal is likewise changing for him, and just as willingly.

 

Right now, as Will is struggling again with the wish to go and climb into Hannibal’s lap, it’s not fear or uncertainty driving the decision to hold back, but faith; they’ll get there. They’ve got time.

 

He trusts Hannibal to be able to plan this.

“I had an email from Beverley,” Hannibal observes – they’ve been talking about his colleagues, and the new film he hopes to be involved in producing. He reaches out to pour them both more water from the cut-glass jug. “She sends her best and attached many digital photographs of puppies which I believe I am intended to forward to you. I judged it best to give her your email for future purposes.”

 

“Good call,” Will grins. “I’d love to see her again. And the dogs,” he adds honestly. “But also her – she was great.”  


Hannibal chuckles. “I’m sure she would appreciate that sentiment.” Then he coughs, and studies his plate. Will supposes he was going to say something about the whole issue of their getting a dog, of Will moving in and having whatever he’d like, but that would relate to future plans and defining their relationship, and those things are off-limits for these first two weeks, by mutual agreement.

 

Right now they have to live in the moment, and be patient.

 

And Will used to be so good at that.

 

“Did you manage to get the new cable for your speakers?” he asks, changing the subject, and they cover the safer space of the vagaries of electronics stores for a while, even as he can’t stop watching Hannibal’s mouth, and knows the reverse may well also be true.

 

After the meal, Will helps wash up and then there’s coffee. Will tries to pay close attention to Hannibal’s operation of the coffee machine, because it’s ridiculous that he’s still not dared to use it unaided. Hannibal gives him a slightly odd look in response, and Will, not wanting to get into that discussion, opts for distraction by sticking his tongue in Hannibal’s ear. Hannibal makes a complaining noise and swats his behind, and for a moment they’re close and panting, and Will hopes for a brief, sharp, wonderful second that he might be reprimanded further.

 

It’s Hannibal who gets himself under control first. He squeezes Will’s hand, kisses him with the briefest of touches, and murmurs “Not yet,” before walking away to get the lacquered tray on which they usually put the coffee cups.

 

Will, still having to measure his breathing and think of dull things, takes himself off to sit on the sofa in the living room, and Hannibal, coming in and seeing him there, patient, breaks into the sweetest smile.

 

There’s a light opera playing on the stereo; Hannibal brought Will CDs for the player in his TV at the hospital, and in many cases he’s come to agree with Hannibal’s taste. Coffee finished, Will leans back across the sofa and with a sigh lifts his feet to rest in Hannibal’s lap, Hannibal putting his own cup down to better be able to rub them. Everything is soft and safe and nothing smells of hospitals, and that would be a delight in itself.

 

Will is aroused, they can both see it, and fuck if it doesn’t make him even harder, hotter, to lie back and just have that obscene bulge at his groin, unashamed. But Hannibal will let him know when something is happening in that direction. Will committed to putting himself in Hannibal’s hands and he’s more than ready to be true to that.

 

Aware in a dreamy way of having dozed off, Will doesn’t try to wake up properly as he becomes conscious of Hannibal gently lifting him up. Just enough to enjoy the sensation of being held.

 

Will wakes up under the covers in their bed, Hannibal a warm, solid presence at his back. He’s been stripped to his underwear, and he wriggles gently across the mattress to get closer still, enjoying the touch of Hannibal’s bare chest against his skin. He rubs his ass against Hannibal’s groin, and is delighted to feel stirrings answering, his own blood rushing in sympathy.

 

“Not yet,” Hannibal murmurs in his ear, and draws his hips back just a little, with a hiss, although he wraps his arms around Will’s torso, fingers smoothing over the swell of Will’s pecs, lightly fondling his nipples in passing.

 

 _There’s time_ , Will thinks, and calms his breathing, and lets himself drift off again.

 

-

 

The next day, Hannibal has a film production meeting in the morning and Will gets his first time alone in the house since the hospital discharge.

 

If he’s going to consider living here, he tells himself, he needs to getting over feeling overawed by everything, or afraid of doing something wrong. He goes into all the rooms, not poking about but just looking at things as they are laid out, trying to convince himself that this really is permitted. He spends some time admiring art hanging on the walls that he’d glanced over on first sight and then just gotten used to; Hannibal is a discriminating and interesting collector, and although he loves his elegant oils there’s not a few modern works, all of them worth some attention.

 

It’s tempting, indeed, to try and make a retrospective analysis of the collector from the collection. Will wonders if there’s any significance, or merely chance, in the fact none of the pictures show any people.

 

Come eleven o’clock, Will makes himself coffee with the precious machine, and the resulting product is very tasty and at the perfect temperature, and as far as he can tell executed without causing any major structural damage. He gives the machine a soothing pat just in case.

 

At this precise moment the machine makes a noise. The nature of said noise is hard to determine; a sort of loud springing clang, as if – certainly to Will’s mind – something no doubt vital had become suddenly detached within.

 

He cannot recall the coffee machine ever making that noise before.

 

For a while, Will just looks at it, and in response it sits there placidly, reflecting his own anxious face back at him in shiny chrome.

 

Will tries to think which of the little lights on the sort of dashboard on the front were on a few minutes ago, before the noise. He’s pretty sure that they are exactly as they were, but then one goes out. This might, of course, refer to something being too hot, or no longer hot enough, or having run out of milk.

 

Will sighs heavily, and rests his head on his hand for a while.

 

If he hadn’t just drunk coffee, the nervous energy might not rise, but right now he wants so much to be good, and breaking the machine and forgetting to mention it, or leaving Hannibal to have to figure it out, doesn’t seem like a good thing to do. Or a good omen for him being in the house at all.

 

Will squares his shoulders, and makes himself another cup of cappuccino. That seems to go fine, no more strange noises or other signs of mechanical distress.

 

After some searching in the cupboards, he locates the right sort of mug for a latte, and makes one of those. Also fine.

 

He can’t find the espresso cups, but the latte cup is plenty big enough so he tells the machine to make one in that. Also fine.

 

He tries macchiato, then mocha. He can’t stand mocha, but as far as he can tell it doesn’t seem to taste actually wrong?

 

“Are you feeling quite well?” comes Hannibal’s voice from behind him, and Will turns rapidly, perhaps a little more jumpy even than usual after a good half hour of quality-checking caffeinated beverages.

 

“The machine went sproing,” he explains, and waves his hand awkwardly in its general direction.

 

It is increasingly possible that the machine is genuinely fine. He, on the other hand, has five cups of coffee arrayed on the counter in front of him which, on reflection, must have made some inroads into Hannibal’s special supply of Jamaica Blue Mountain beans, with which the machine is loaded regularly with loving attention.

 

“Sproing?” Hannibal queries. He doesn’t look annoyed. In fact he looks almost anxious.

 

Will can’t help laughing. “I swear to you, my brain was exactly like this well before it developed any autoimmune diseases. No, the machine made a weird noise just after I’d used it, and I was worried I’d broken it, and I… went a bit over and above testing that out.”

 

“A different noise to the usual one?”

 

Will bites his lip. “Um. I don’t know. I’ve never used it before.”

 

Hannibal’s frown is even more confused, and not a little troubled.

 

“Look, would you like some coffee,” Will continues, trying to sound pragmatic and move the conversation on. “Because there’s lots. And I’m sorry.”

 

Hannibal comes towards him. “Did you know that your eyes are technically part of your brain?” he asks.

 

“No?”

 

Hannibal leans in and kisses Will’s eyelids. “I love your brain,” he says quietly, and then hugs him close. Will smiles into him, and lets himself be rocked, even as his pulse soars from proximity and relief and mocha-latte-cappu-spresso.

 

“Can I help make a start on lunch?” Will asks when they part. He could poke at what Hannibal just said, but not yet, he can’t quite manage that yet.

 

“Ah yes – no, thank you.” Hannibal grins easily enough, as though he hasn’t even noticed what he confessed. “We are going out. I’ve found a new place I would like to try.”

 

Will’s all for that. They didn’t go out to eat much, either, in the latter stages of his illness, and it’s the sort of normal habit it’s great to be getting back to. Hannibal won’t give a clue as to where they’re going, other than to assure him that formal dress isn’t necessary – Will keeps on his loose cotton trousers, but changes into a tight t-shirt which gets an appreciative glance, thought he’s almost too busy admiring Hannibal’s charcoal linen suit to notice – and of the all the places Will might have expected, he’d never imagined where they end up.

 

“ _Plates du Jour_?” Will reads off the front, frowning. His French is rusty, but he’s pretty sure that that’s wrong.

 

“It’s a pottery workshop and a restaurant!” Hannibal says happily, as though of course that would be the kind of thing a near-obsessive gourmand would approve of.

 

Will can only grin, and kiss him, and follow him inside, and hope Hannibal’s eagerness to please won’t have lead them to a culinary experience he’ll regret.

 

But the food is pretty great, Will finds, once they’re sat down and he’s tucking into watercress soup and Irish soda bread, followed by a simple but beautiful steak and chips. The place is arranged so that the workshop is the first thing one passes through coming in off the street, the cosy eating area tucked behind, and the one story building has a square courtyard cut into the middle, separating diners and workshop, and itself very pleasing with ferns and a fountain over a Romanesque mosaic tinkling merrily.

 

“Is the plan that we… pot, later?” Will asks, raising his eyebrow.

 

Hannibal smacks his lips over another forkful of mushroom risotto. He does in fact look rather pleasantly surprised by the food. “I thought that it would be interesting, yes.”

 

“This isn’t some kind of complex Patrick Swayze fantasy we’re dealing with here?”

 

Hannibal sniffs. “That film has done nothing at all for the reputation of an important and ancient craft form.”

 

“OK then, that’s a no.” Will picks up his fork again. He’s so happy he doesn’t know what to do but tease. “I warn you though, whatever misshapen mutant thing I make, it is coming back and it is going on the mantelpiece.”

 

“I think you will discover you have a gift for this work.”

 

“Oh yeah?”

 

“Yes. You have very sensitive hands.”

 

Will drops his fork on the floor, almost bangs his head retrieving it, and chokes slightly.

 

Hannibal looks far too smug. Will determines that he is going to make something beyond hideous and possibly obscene.

 

And hopefully face the consequences.

 

He’s not expecting, though, just how pleasing throwing a pot is. When the instructor sits him down at the wheel, shows him what to do and then lets him try for himself, Will finds the steady forming of the bowl under his hands satisfying on a very deep level. The soft, wet clay, the steady spin, the calm of the small universe in his grasp; it’s meditative, and yet much easier than he’s ever found trying to clear his own mind.

 

Hannibal clearly has come with a plan in mind, and sets in to make a series of dishes of ever decreasing size with obnoxiously brilliant judgment of shape and dimension – Will can see already that the thin-rimmed forms will nest into each other perfectly. Hannibal’s strong, careful hands look gorgeous with the clay slick and undulating under them – never mind that he and Will aren’t spooned up _Ghost_ -style, it’s still pretty arousing.

 

Will has a go at the wheel and ends up, to his own surprise, with a fairly decent bowl forming from his lump of clay. He then makes another bowl, and then messes one up and decides to go the other way and make a skinny vase, seeing how high he can get the sides. It’s the most simple fun he’s had in he can’t remember how long.

 

When he looks up at one point and sees Hannibal watching him fondly, contentedly, Hannibal’s hands suspended in the air and forgetting their task, the vase – getting on, he will contend later, for over a foot in height - goes over, and is lost to posterity.

 

Will makes a third bowl before the session ends, and experiments once it’s formed with fluting the edges, starting to think about ways they could actually use it.

 

That’s daringly close to thinking about the future, but no one needs to know that.

 

On the way out, they book another slot to come back and paint their work after it has been through its first firing. Then there’ll be another firing and, the man at the counter says, understandably eager for custom, the possibility for another decorating session after that.

 

“If it’s worth doing, it’s worth taking time over,” the guy enthuses, and Hannibal hands over his credit card with a subtle smile that Will feels quietly sure he can interpret, association of ideas sending off thick thrills down his spine. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE NOTE ADDITIONAL TAGS
> 
> I split this chapter (into part 7 & *8) mostly for symmetry. I'm thinking one more chapter to go before we round all this up *g* I cannot tell you how much I appreciate people liking this very random AU, thank you guys! *g*

Back at the house for the afternoon, Hannibal’s got a thick folder of documents from his meeting to read over. Will sits next to him on the sofa to read his book, and they press companionably together, shoulder to shoulder, Mozart on the stereo. Then, come seven o’clock, Hannibal suggests a light salad, and Will gladly volunteers his services at the chopping board, hoping for another lesson in dicing, which has previously involved being held snugly from behind in the way that apparently pottery doesn’t have to.

 

But the ingredients are prepped in the most professional way, and it’s only when it’s all ready that Hannibal pauses with the bowl of undressed leaves and vegetables in front of him, and clears his throat.

 

Attention zinging into focus, Will looks at him.

 

“If you follow me to the bedroom at this juncture,” Hannibal is saying, each word placed with precision, “you will find it is still not yet time for all that you might wish. However, I hope I might offer a form of… satisfaction, which might ever prove to be something better.”

 

Will shivers, a luscious prickling sensation across his whole body. He’s been conscious of Hannibal in a slow-burning way for hours, but quite suddenly he’s gone from relaxed to tense with it, needing.

 

That said, he’ll take whatever Hannibal wants to give him, and the idea of being denied is strangely, confusingly hotter than the idea of being indulged. His cock is throbbing in his trousers, loose as they are, but more than anything he wants for Hannibal to look at him, see how much he wants and welcomes this.

 

Hannibal, though, having neatly covered the salad with saran wrap, turns away, and starts walking out of the kitchen.

 

Will follows at once, trying not to stumble with eagerness.

 

All the way to the bedroom threshold, Hannibal keeps his back to him, stepping in measured tread that Will attempts to match.

 

So when, at the bedroom door, Hannibal finally turns, it must be with complete awareness that Will was following him, but a smile of pleasure breaks over his face all the same.

 

“Good,” Hannibal murmurs, and it seems to be an emotional reaction as much as it is praise, although it is undoubtedly that too, and Will beams and blooms under it.

 

Hannibal reaches out and strokes the side of his face, tucking a curl behind Will’s ear. Then he kisses him briefly on the lips, soft, and Will reacts on instinct, reaching for him.

 

“Let me,” Hannibal tells him, pushing Will’s arms gently back down, and then, when Will blushes, annoyed with himself for having got such a simple thing wrong; “If you touch me I may not control myself sufficiently to deliver to you what I wish to. That is why I ask this.”

 

Will has to clench his hands at his sides to keep on obeying. He wants to kiss Hannibal so much, and Hannibal seems to intuit that, leaning in and brushing their lips together once more, just barely sharing a breath.

 

Inside the bedroom, Hannibal must have been at work sometime during the afternoon that Will didn’t notice. There are thick towels laid out across the bed, the curtains lowered and a few carefully arranged candles burning. At the bedside a small table has been drawn up, in what Will thinks might be a conscious reference to the arrangement they’d had in the hospital, but this table is antique cabinet-made wood rather than cheap laminate on plastic, and on it (on a silver tray, the surface being precious), is a bowl of some sort of oil. There’s a sponge and a flannel, too, and a strange curved object, like a sort of metal shoehorn with a wooden handle, that Will isn’t able to put a name to. Actually it looks slightly threatening, but he trusts Hannibal, and doesn’t hesitate when he’s asked to strip and lie down.

 

It feels good to be naked. He’s getting warmer and warmer with each passing second.

 

Going to lie on the bed on his back, raising his head and resting back on his elbows, Will is able to watch Hannibal take his own clothes off in turn. It’s enough to worsen his gathering arousal, to make his whole body flush and then flush again, deeper, as his hardening cock bobs in the air.

 

Hannibal turns to look at him, and Will doesn’t even have to think before lying flat down again properly, submissive and eager.

 

That earns Will a pleased growl, and he shivers, toes curling.

 

“For now, turn onto your front, my dear,” Hannibal tells him softly, coming towards the bed, his own cock free and thick and swinging, and Will obeys, terribly, wonderfully conscious of the way the new position bares his ass, which feels heavy and sensitive all over already. He can’t suppress a moan.

 

Hannibal strokes his back, slow. “Yes. This is for enjoyment. This is for pleasure from your lovely body for us both.”

 

There’s a few sounds, and then the warmth of Hannibal’s hand returning to his back, but slippery, and Will can smell the base notes of the oil, no harsh scents but a rising waxy aroma all the same, just slightly sweet. Then there’s a tickly, trickly feeling and Will twitches, and realizes Hannibal is pouring more oil onto him from above, smoothing it carefully over all his skin.

 

“The athletes of the Ancient World,” Hannibal is saying now, voice low and steady, “having competed in their sports and undertaken great feats, would cleanse themselves in oil, attended by slaves using such an instrument as this.” He comes to kneel on the floor by the bed, level with where Will’s head rests on the pillow, and holding out the shoehorn thing for Will to see. “It is called a strigil. It is a blunt blade, used to scrape away the oil which has been applied, and with it the dead skin and dirt which may have gathered.”

 

“Sexy,” Will mutters, turning his head to speak and raising one eyebrow, and then feels awkward - slightly panicked – fearing he’s breaking the mood.

 

“I had this made several years ago,” Hannibal continues, as if Will hadn’t spoken, but rests one hand on the center of his back, reassuring. “I loved the idea of such cleansing, of such making anew. But the recipient needed to be to be worthy of my service, and I began to think I would never find such a person.”

 

Will’s blush breaks out over his neck and throat, and he’s sure it can be seen from behind coming round to his ears. He wants to duck his head in the pillow and hide it, but he can’t tear his gaze from Hannibal’s.

 

 _Worthy of my service._ Will has to bite his bottom lip, and still a sound creeps out.

 

“I was just sick, Hannibal, that’s all, ” he can’t stop himself from arguing. “I didn’t do anything special.”

 

Hannibal leans in, kisses his cheek, his eyelid, the edge of his ear.

 

“Hush now, my dear. And let me.”

 

And what can Will do but shiver and moan, as Hannibal – keeping a touch on him at all times, never leaving him without that grounding – begins to scrape the strigil against his skin?

 

It’s an odd feeling, and increasingly a rather wonderful one, though how much of that is just the knowledge that this is Hannibal doing it to him, and what that means, would be hard to judge. The application of the strigil is not painful, exactly, but not comfortable either - the lightest, broadest, smoothest scratch but pressure nonetheless, leaving Will’s skin glowing with heat and perhaps, yes, a sensation of freshness, of being rendered clean and new.

 

All the old body, old carefully maintained, cautious shell, the one that faced the worst, sloughing away, and himself, complete, beneath. Will can’t think to do more than hum and gasp in appreciation, and Hannibal pets him through it, interspersing the hard-edged instrument with the stroke of his hands until Will doesn’t know what kind of touch will come next, can only melt and whimper and wait, patient, exhilarated.

 

There’s a quiet clunk – Will vaguely registers that Hannibal has put the device aside.

 

All this time Hannibal’s been kneeling at the side of the bed, but now there’s a dip in the mattress as he stands up and comes to straddle Will, knees to either side of his hips, and Will moans happily, hopefully lifting his ass, especially as Hannibal starts dripping yet more oil over him, which pools and tries to flow down his spine to the cleft of his buttocks, a tease that makes Will’s hole twitch.

 

Hannibal keeps their naked bodies separate though, chuckling softly. Slowly, slowly, his strong hands move downwards, into the divots at the base of Will’s spine, to the very top of the round curves, and Will’s thighs shake.

 

As they worked the clay earlier, Hannibal’s fingers run over and over Will’s muscles, pressing and loosening. Will would not have said he was especially tense, other than the excitement of being like this with Hannibal, but as Hannibal works at the knots and sore expanses of his back, Will is aware of finally releasing stress he’s been carrying too long.

 

“So many people touched me,” Will murmurs, helplessly happy, and thinks that won’t make sense, but Hannibal hums in apparent agreement, and presses a kiss to the back of his neck.

 

Will’s so hard now, and he knows he’s leaking onto the towels gathered beneath his hips. He might have thought that years in adult films would give him some control of his libido, but it’s a real struggle not to thrust into the bed to gain some friction. So much better, though, to stay good, to hear the murmured praise that keeps flowing from Hannibal’s mouth as he molds Will anew.

 

Will’s ass is palmed and pressed and squeezed, all without those fingers dipping in towards where he wants them. It’s amazing, and terrible, and he can’t help trying to spread his legs open, aching and desperate for Hannibal’s fingers to press inside.

 

“Not yet,” Hannibal whispers, and kisses the small of Will’s back, and then tops of his thighs, lips a softer brush than that of his hands, harder to identify.

 

Will cries out, muffling the noise in the pillow in front of his face where he’s pressing, sweaty and hot and maybe crying a little without really thinking about it, blissed out.

 

“Darling.” Hannibal touches his shoulders again, moving on the bed. “It’s alright. Turn over now. Look at me.”

 

Will does, knowing he is sweaty and snotty, and then blinks as he lifts his gaze up, feeling another wave of emotion when he sees the way Hannibal is looking at him. A hot sweetness is gathering in his throat and making it hard to breathe.

 

“You’re doing beautifully,” Hannibal pronounces. His voice is a little congested; he has to clear his throat before he speaks again. “May I work on your front now? Can you bear it for me?”

 

Biting his lip, Will nods, blinking again. The sensation of turning, the cooler air against his front and the rough, hot towel beneath his back now feel extraordinarily intense. Then, like lightning grounded to a rod, everything gathers at where Hannibal touches him to connect them once more, Hannibal’s palms coming down to rub at Will’s shoulder joints and then his upper arms, his collarbones and over the top of his chest.

 

Will’s nipples are hard and tight anyway, but Hannibal leans in and mouths at one, lapping it soft and then sucking it hard again as Will strains and almost wails with the sensation, hips bucking up.

 

And then Hannibal in his entirety comes down, skin touching everywhere, blanketing their bodies together to hold Will still. Hannibal’s cock is hot and hard and nudging at Will’s belly, but he doesn’t seem to be feeling the need to do anything about it, and his weight simply keeps Will in place for what seems to go on and on, endless, each moment clear and infinite in Will’s mind.

 

Hannibal’s hair has come loose from its tie somewhere during all this, and it is flowing, silk, between them.

 

Will wants to come so much, so very much, and the worse it gets the better it is, a high like nothing he’s felt before. It would be different if it was anyone else in bed with him, but this is Hannibal, this is what he can do for Hannibal, and when there is, finally, a cry and a gush of liquid between them he knows it’s Hannibal who broke, who came untouched, and Will groans out in delight, aware of sobbing and scarcely caring at all.

 

“… so beautiful, so good,” Hannibal is murmuring, panting, even as he is still stiff and shocked with his own pleasure. “Can you bear this? Are you well, my dear?”

 

Will mumbles something affirmative, pushing his head into the safe darkness at the curve of Hannibal’s neck as Hannibal sits him up and gathers him close. There’s a low, sweet ache between Will’s legs, his balls still tight and eager, his dick thick and heavy, but he wishes he could sit on this plateau of wanting it forever, safe in Hannibal’s grasp.

 

Hannibal holds him, then wipes him down, then wraps him in a blanket, puts him in a chair and cleans up the bed. He feeds Will sugar on his fingers, water from his hands, and then a bottle of fruit juice one careful sip at a time.

 

Will feels out of focus, vibrating too fast to be seen. Humming with need and yet so achingly fulfilled. _Not yet_ , but that’s OK, that’s nothing he has to worry about.

 

After a while, Hannibal carries him down the stairs, and they have the fresh, piquant salad with lemon dressing followed by chocolate mousse. Will feels able to eat for himself but not to talk yet; they’ve come back to the sofa, eating there for once, and he nudges his head against Hannibal’s shoulder now and again, just to check in. Hannibal, meanwhile, keeps forgetting to eat, and watching him instead, and Will could float away.

 

The TV is showing a ballet beamed live from somewhere in New York. Over an hour so, back in his blanket cocoon, Will slowly surfaces.

 

“Which one is the stepmother again?” he asks, after a while, frowning at the screen.

 

Hannibal sits up a little, looking at him. His hand stays, heavy and warm, on Will’s full belly. “How are you feeling?”

 

“Good,” Will assures him earnestly. “So good.”

 

“I did not imagine even you could be so beautiful as that. Or so sweet for me.” Hannibal is cupping his face again, eyes deep and sparkling. His hair is back in a simple tie, and Will reaches out to grab some strands, twist them around his fingers in silver rings.

 

Licking his lips before he speaks, Will tries to find the words, feeling them waiting to spill, and deciding to be incautious: “I loved it,” he whispers, and kisses Hannibal before he can say any more of the same, at least for now.

 

There’s time.

 

They keep kissing until, for Will, it starts to make him ache just a little too much, and threatens to take the edge off his satisfied unsatisfaction, his cock all too ready to surge and stiffen and beg for more than it was allowed.

 

Will leans back, and after a moment works himself back into the position he’s becoming increasingly used to – lying across the sofa with his feet in Hannibal’s lap.

 

“Now,” he says firmly, pointing at the TV. “Please explain what on earth that lady is doing with that dancing frog.”

 

-

 

All through the next day, Hannibal is attentive and never far from his side. It is, Will suspects, the way Hannibal wanted to behave during Will’s illness. Then, Hannibal had restrained himself, considerate of Will’s irritation with being coddled, but now, in acting out the dynamic with mutual consent, they can both indulge.

 

Will can lean back and use Hannibal as a pillow as they rest awhile in bed in the morning, and be petted and fed grapes, and Hannibal can stroke his hair and kiss his fingers, and sometimes tease him, slipping a hand under his t-shirt to roll Will’s nipples until he’s splay-legged and gasping, skin hot.

 

For the most part, though everything is calm and low key. Around eleven they go for a short walk around the neighborhood, purchasing a few groceries and taking a meander through the local community garden scheme.

  
It’s not the sort of place Will would have imagined himself living, in the end, but that’s not to say it isn’t somewhere he could be happy. He can feel the edges of such a possibility nudging at his awareness, somewhere intertwined with the embers of the arousal he’s still carrying from the night before.

 

 _Not yet_ , Hannibal had said when they’d woken up, when Will had been nuzzling at him and seeking friction with their intertwined thighs, demanding only in order to get the pleasure of being prevented; calmed and stopped.

 

“You like it when I discipline you,” Hannibal murmured to him, more than somewhat a question, and Will had buried his blush in Hannibal’s shoulder but nodded too, squeezing Hannibal’s hand.

 

That’s not a destination Will had searched for, either. Or not that he’d let himself know about. But he thinks he might be happy there too.

 

He thinks it might be splendid.

 

After lunch, Will sends Hannibal away from the washing up, as he once again prepared all the food, and on to get back to his work for his next meeting. Dishes clean, Will sets to making them both coffee, trying to be undaunted by technology. In triumphant possession of exactly two cappuccinos, he brings them through to the living room. When he puts Hannibal’s at his side, he gets a kiss that deepens more than perhaps either of them intended.

 

“There’s nothing in this house I value more than you. Nothing close.” Hannibal tells him, earnest, breathless, as they part. Then he coughs, laughs a little, licks his lips and looks away, still shy of his sincerity, it would seem. “I apologize, Will, I did not mean to… But I am very glad to see this appear.” He points at his cup.

 

“But,” Will pauses, uncertain. He bites his lip. “There were things – people – that were important to you, before me, surely? I mean… I…” He shakes his head, annoyed that the words won’t come. “I’m not saying you owe me any explanations or any stories, only that… If other people matter, if other people need things from you? I’m not going to resent that or challenge it or say that you promised me otherwise. So don’t… if it’s even a thing.”

 

“It’s not a thing.” Hannibal holds his gaze a long moment. “Not any more. There is no one else.”

 

Will’s ready to draw away, head bowed, and try to think how to change the subject – he’s really not going to push, he can be patient with this too - when Hannibal starts moving again, getting his wallet out of his pocket.

 

There’s a photo in between the credit cards and IDs. A bit blurry, overexposed with washed-out color, unmistakably of several decades ago. It’s a woman in late middle age, smiling from under a tight perm, a toddler in a sunhat carried on one arm.

 

“That’s not me,” Hannibal says, quickly. “But she was my foster mother. I had her, until five years ago. She was…” he stops, takes a sharp breath in, shakes his head.

 

Will nods quickly. He sits down at Hannibal’s side. “Good,” Will presses close, snuggles in. “That’s good. Thank you.”

 

They hug a while, and gradually Will realizes Hannibal has actually fallen asleep against him, and is resting easy and calm, breathing gently.

 

Will stays very still, and smiles, and counts the lines around Hannibal’s eyes, and hopes quietly that more than most are from smiling.

 

-

 

It’s another, different, and certainly wonderful satisfaction when Hannibal takes him to bed again just before dinner, having awoken with a glint in his eye, and spends what feels like ages indulging himself with Will’s nipples before beginning to touch anywhere else.

 

Will is on his back, hot, flushed and hard and dripping when Hannibal takes his mouth up and off the swollen, puffy, sore nub he’s been tonguing at and smiles down at him again.

 

“Please… please…” Will is gasping, and he’s not sure what he’s begging for, to stop or start, to end this or never to think of doing so.

 

Hannibal murmurs something in a language Will doesn’t know, hissing-sweet and honeyed, and very carefully puts his hand between Will’s legs, lifting each heavy testicle as if he’s weighing them, as if he can feel the congested tension inside, Will being more than ready for so, so long.

 

“My dearest one,” Hannibal tells him. “Just a little longer. You will appreciate this, I think.”

 

It’s not like Will can think anything else in return – he tries to rise up on his elbows, and trembles and half-falls back, and whines.

 

“Here,” says Hannibal gently, and comes to kneel behind him, drawing Will’s body up onto himself to rest in the cradle of his legs. Hannibal’s brings his chin to sit on the crook of Will’s neck, then he bites at the skin there, just a very little. It’s grounding, viscerally good, and Will stills, trying to control his breathing.

 

Everything went smooth and simple in Will’s head a good half an hour ago. He’s not worried by anything more than the moment. Hannibal is here. Hannibal will see them right. He trusts that more with each heartbeat.

 

And Hannibal is touching him now, at least, stroking one cupped hand carefully over Will’s cock, and Will moans and feels his thighs tense, ready.

 

Only for Hannibal to pull away again, his hand resting flat on Will’s heaving belly instead, an echo of their favorite caress.

 

Will is crying, freely and easily. It doesn’t matter. He’s leaking all over the place, he’s a mess, and it’s fine. No matter how Hannibal sees him, all Hannibal seems to see in him is goodness.

 

“…in the end, I promise, but not quite yet,” Hannibal is murmuring, and just as Will is starting to feel conscious of any other part of his body again, back Hannibal’s hand goes to Will’s groin. Will doesn’t even try to struggle as Hannibal very slowly slips Will’s foreskin up and over his cockhead, dislodging beads of precum, before pulling it back again and revealing the pearly pink skin. Will has to kick his heels and bite his lip hard, and cries out without meaning to, shuddering with the intensity. He can feel Hannibal’s harsh breath against his skin, Hannibal’s cock a hard, hot line at his back.

 

Again, Hannibal’s hand leaves him just as he really thinks he might finally peak, and they both watch as Will’s cock stays high and hard and straining, as if one breath would be all it took.

 

“My darling,” Hannibal says, and his voice is rasping. “How are you so patient?”

 

 _Because I’m not afraid you’ll leave me, not any more_ – that’s what Will wants to say, but he can’t, his mouth won’t work for anything but moaning now.

 

“And it is hard to wait, so hard to wait for what we desire. I want you inside me again, so very, very much,” Hannibal continues. “I want, with you, everything.” And at that very moment his hand closes once more, one final time, and Will’s orgasm is fireworks and 10m dives and free and fast and perfect.

 

-

 

 _You’ve got me forever,_ Will thinks, and strokes Hannibal’s hair again. It’s still not quite time to talk. He woke in the night, having been lovingly put to bed at the end of an evening of the most tender care. He fell asleep in Hannibal’s arms, and although his bladder is calling him up now, he doesn’t want to wriggle free even for a moment.

 

He kisses the thin skin at the side of Hannibal’s eyes, over where the lines are.

 

They’ve not even had one week of the trial period, but he knows, now, for sure, for certain.

 

“Forever,” Will whispers, like a charm, before he breaks away.

 

-


End file.
